Audrey T.
Photography by Caroline MacLaren
If you’re reading this, you deserve to feel better.
I’ve always been an anxious person. My friends will tell you that I’m one of the biggest overthinkers out there. However, this year, my anxiety manifested itself in a completely new way. I started having panic attacks.
I was so scared at first because I didn’t understand what was happening. I left a nail salon in the middle of getting my nails done, explaining to the nail technician that I had some sort of fake “family emergency,” and cried in my car. I thought that it would be a one-time thing, but that wasn’t the case.
It didn’t matter whether I was out at dinner with my family, at the movie theater, or sitting in class. A feeling of complete fear and restlessness would overtake me, leaving me to wonder if it was going to end. The room would spin, I would feel like I was going to pass out, and I would have to close my eyes and wait for it to pass. It was the reason that I always sat at the end of a table at a restaurant, out of fear that I would have to quickly excuse myself so that I could go sit on the floor of the bathroom and take deep breaths.
This winter, I spent almost two weeks sitting on the couch in my apartment, too scared to go to the first Wells Fargo Game or do anything fun with my friends in case I had another attack. I thought about how embarrassing it would be to pass out in a public space, surrounded by a bunch of strangers.
I ended up in the health center a couple of times, convinced I had something medically wrong with me. They checked my lungs, my heart, my thyroid, and even drew some blood work, but everything checked out to be fine. Around this same time, I decided to seek out the counseling center to see if there was anything they could do to help me. Quite honestly, I never really saw an end in sight. I thought I was just going to have to deal with my panic attacks.
Through therapy, I found out that I wasn’t going crazy. Panic disorder is very common and is one of the most treatable disorders within psychiatry. While therapy was never something that I thought I would benefit from, I’m glad that I decided to start going.
Therapy is hard, but it’s taught me a lot. Healing is slow, and it’s not linear. I still have days where I feel anxious, but I’m no longer crying in my car on the way home from Target or trying not to pass out in the bathroom of a restaurant. I can even get my nails done. It’s so easy to be hard on yourself through this whole process, but one of my favorite quotes is “you cannot hate yourself into a version of yourself that you love.”
I feel so much better after finally acknowledging that I deserve to feel better. I feel like I am finally in control of something that I thought had all the control over me. I’ve also talked to so many people who I didn’t know felt the same way that I did. There is so much strength in solidarity.
Whether treatment looks like for you: consistent therapy, medication, or meditation, everyone deserves to feel better.
If you’re reading this, you don’t have to suffer in silence.
Audrey T., Villanova University
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