I still remember my first anxiety attack. I was 16 or 17 years old at the time. It was the annual blood drive at my high school and I saw a classmate with a bandage wrapped around his arm. It made me shaky and nervous. I walked to my U.S. History II Honors class and I couldn’t stop shaking, my heart was pounding and I was having trouble controlling my emotions. I held onto my desk as I walked in the room, suddenly I couldn’t contain it any longer, I started crying. I turned around and asked my teacher if I could be excused. I went to the nurses office and they told me it was an anxiety attack. It was the first time I ever heard someone utter “anxiety attack”. Was that a real thing?
After that day, I wouldn’t go to school if they had a blood drive because I was scared of getting an anxiety attack. I also get anxious getting my blood drawn, the sight of a needle scares the hell out of me. There goes my plan of ever getting a tattoo. I started going to therapy when I was 17 and it helped me understand my anxiety disorder but it wasn’t that deep and I found myself just venting to my therapist about things that upset me or made me mad in high school. Just typical high school drama, our conversations rarely ever addressed my mental health. I was still young and I didn’t take the time to educate myself on mental illness.
