Surroundings: by Ashley Sinclair

People without anxiety or people who have not experienced panic attacks really don’t know what it’s like. I mean, I’m not certain because I am one of the people who has panic attacks and anxiety, but from talking with others, I realize they don’t know what to do or how to understand it.

 I hope that my previous posts gave you a glimpse into what it’s like. Besides all of the usual symptoms, the other thing I notice is as much as I love English (rock star English class nerd here), my anxiety makes me very confused with English or just language in general. I sometimes feel as if I stumble across my words. I tend to think to myself, am I even speaking English? People just respond with general answers, scared to dig into my brain fully to understand.

 Sometimes it’s nice to be alone when you have anxiety, but sometimes it’s nice to not be. As I said, I hope this helps people understand a little more. It definitely helps to have a support system in life, overall.

 I know that I personally struggle with how to tell when a situation is worth the anxiety or not; however, most of the time I feel as if I cannot control how I react. For example, phone anxiety. Ugh. I dread the phone. It totally gives me anxiety, as I’m sure many millennials experience as that’s just not really our culture anymore. But, phone anxiety should not be stressed upon. What about a category 5 hurricane hurdling toward your city as your first hurricane? Sure. Now, constant worrying or imagining negative outcomes with situations, should that be stressed upon? Probably not, because why would you create these nightmares when they most likely will never happen? Because my brain thinks it’s fun. Maybe I watched too many horror movies. Maybe I just need to write more. I don’t really know, but it sucks. If you have any advice on what to do when your mind starts creating these negative outcomes, let me know.

 So this leads me to today. Today, I consider myself a South Florida native who has found her happy place. Yep, my happy place. Kickboxing has turned my life around, physically and mentally. I won’t go into details about it, but it definitely gives me an outlet and a support system. That doesn’t mean that my anxiety has just gone away, but it definitely has lessened.

I think one of the biggest themes in my life regarding this so far has been tied to perfection as well. We grow up always striving for that “A” in school and in life; “A is for perfect” or “A is for anxiety”? I think we should have the “A” stand for “amazing”—amazing thoughts turn into amazing actions, which turn into an amazing life.

-Ashley Sinclair

I want to thank Tripp Watson for letting me write this for his blog, and honestly, for sparking me to start up writing again! This is my first piece I have written in an extremely long time. One of my favorite quotes is, “Reading is like breathing in; writing is like breathing out.” I can finally breathe out again. How amazing is it that no matter where we are in the world, we can all come together somehow, whether for good or bad or something in between. I hope we can make it count.