Harry K.
Photography by Mason Schlopy
If you’re reading this, it’s okay to not be comfortable in your own skin.
For most of my life, I never felt like I was on solid footing emotionally. In elementary school, I was always the shy kid who never went on many playdates. In middle school, this shyness turned into a more serious anxiety. I finally reached my breaking point in 8th grade. I had a major anxiety attack about having a simple stomach ache at school (which turned out to be nothing). And then a few days later, I had a mental breakdown at a school dance after a girl called me lame for not wanting to dance with her.
I knew I needed professional help at that point. I started to see a therapist for the first time and began to dive into what anxiety means and represents.
In my mind, having anxiety was like a rare disease that I’d been infected with. I never saw anyone in school deal with it constantly the way I did. I never heard of anyone having a mental breakdown. I never heard of anyone having anxiety over the smallest health concerns. To me, everyone was comfortable in their own skin except me. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
My therapist explained to me that anxiety is like a fire alarm in our brains. Every building has a fire alarm. Everyone has anxiety. The alarm goes off whenever it senses smoke, or in the case of anxiety, whenever it senses something that may cause us physical or emotional harm. The difference between people like me and those who are “normal” is the number of “false alarms.”
We all have false alarms of anxiety. It could go off for a big exam. Or a first date or dance. Or even when watching a horror movie. It’s natural for our minds to be occasionally overprotective and sense danger where there actually isn’t any. But sometimes, there are those whose alarms go off constantly every day with no end in sight. And that, as my therapist explained, is what I had.
Over the next few years, I learned how to live with anxiety, how to avoid certain triggers, and how to cope when I came close to having a breakdown. But most importantly, I learned how to open up about my anxiety to friends and loved ones, so they understood what I dealt with on a daily basis. From that experience, I learned an extremely crucial point: plenty of people are not comfortable in their own skin.
Almost 8 years after having first gone to therapy, I have talked to dozens of friends, family, co-workers, and adults who shared their own experiences with anxiety, depression, and other mental health struggles. A common thread throughout many of their stories is this idea that they felt, at one point or another, like they were completely alone and the only one not okay in their daily lives.
But that is not true. You are not alone. Ask for help, whether from a friend, therapist, or loved one. With time and patience, you’ll realize we all have our own false alarms.
Harry K., Syracuse University
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