How Anxiety Impacts my Own Life
- nthomas0729
- Feb 13, 2020
- 2 min read
Anxiety impacts me in a variety of ways. A lot of my anxiety is related to my obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). My OCD and anxiety are related because I will obsess over things that make me anxious. A lot of my anxious thoughts come in the form of “What ifs?”. Some of the thoughts I have experienced throughout college include: “What if I don’t graduate college because I lose my Hope scholarship?” “What if things just get worse?”, “What if I cheated on the test?”, “What if I said something I didn’t want to say?”, “What if I get kicked out of college?”, “What if I don’t have OCD and am just crazy?”, etc. However, none of these fears have come true. I am graduating college in July 2020. I have kept my Hope scholarship and will graduate with Honors. Life has its moments but has gotten so much better than what it used to be. I didn’t cheat on the test or say something I didn’t want to say; those were just intrusive thoughts. Things almost always work out and are never as bad as they seem. I do have OCD and that’s ok because I am learning to cope with it.
More importantly, having OCD and anxiety has made me passionate about raising awareness for mental health. I struggled a lot with my OCD and anxiety throughout my life, especially during my freshmen year of college. I decided to make and post a video to my Facebook page during my freshman year explaining how my OCD affected me. To my surprise, I received a lot of support from other students at Piedmont College. The support made me feel better about myself, and I felt safe to be open and honest about my mental health. This led me to become a mental health advocate. I do my best to advocate for mental health through other videos I made about mental health my freshmen year, speeches, writing, starting a chapter of Active Minds (a club that raises awareness for mental health) at Piedmont College and choosing a mental health-related topic for Capstone on how social media can help individuals cope with anxiety. While anxiety can be a challenge, I am grateful because it led me to become the mental health advocate I am today.
Great question Nate! When experiencing anxiety, I often imagine the worst-case scenario. I may have also been worried that people would judge me if they knew I was struggling. There is also a lot of stigma that surrounds mental health. I was also a freshman at the time, so I did not realize how kind and supportive most of the students were at Piedmont.
Nicole, why were you surprised to receive support from other students at Piedmont?