Anxiety

Lets bring awareness to a common mental health struggle.

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Hey guys, welcome or welcome back to another episode of the Girl Got Girls podcast. I'm your host, Nadia Price. For this episode, I want to get very vulnerable on a topic that has been so hard to talk about that I can't even believe I'm talking about it now. But that just shows you that I've come out on the other end, and I am working towards full, full healing. I want to talk about anxiety, bring awareness to it, my struggles, what helped me personally, because it's overall different for everyone. But I think that anxiety is so overlooked, but affects so many people in very deep ways, like it has affected me. So I really just wanted to bring this topic to light. Let's first talk about what it feels like to have anxiety. Anxiety feels like a constant battle with yourself. It feels like you are constantly fighting yourself nonstop, never-ending. It is the most tiring cycle I've ever been through. It also feels like you're drowning all the time in your thoughts and in your actions, and it just feels like you're constantly trying to fight to get air and fight to come out of the water when you're just slowly sinking and going deeper and deeper. And you also don't feel real. At least for me, I felt real and I knew I was real, obviously. But anxiety just overtook everything that my emotions were all out of whack, and it I was tired all the time because I was constantly fighting myself. It came with anger issues and just like the constant struggle of overwhelming and myself and overthinking. And anxiety is basically an overall simplified how it feels is it feels like you're hurting yourself before others can. Which is a blessing and a curse. But I think that mainly anxiety comes from a lack of trust in other people or in yourself, and that can come from experience or just like you've never had trust, you've always been such a closed-off person. It can also come from pressure, especially in this society. There's so much pressure around everything. If you're in a sport, there's so much more competition in sports than there ever has been in school and trying to get into college and a job and everything like that. There's so much competition, and it's constantly rising, people are constantly getting better, and younger people are constantly getting higher and higher, so they're outshining the older people, and just overall, the world is so deeply competitive in every aspect, and I think that's why anxiety is going through the roof, especially for our generation, because there's just again so much pressure, and it builds up and bubbles up into obviously not good things. But anxiety can also be genetics. If you have other people in your family that have anxiety, you can have it too. It is a mental health disorder that you can be diagnosed with and tested for. But just because you don't have that depression and anxiety duo does not mean that it's any less effective on you. For me, my anxiety when I could really, really notice it, and I was noticing the signs of it and everything, was when I could not sleep. I had the worst insomnia known to mankind. I mean, my parents can vouch for this. I genuinely got like one night of sleep the entire week, and it was a constant cycle of every single Sunday, every single Sunday. I couldn't sleep the entire night. It was like clockwork. Every single Sunday I could not sleep. I tried everything. I went to bed at like 7 p.m. just to like try and get more sleep, and I just ended up not being able to do it, or I'd go to sleep and then snap right back out of it. It was horrible. I was like a zombie around school, around everything. Luckily, at that time, I wasn't doing a sport, so I didn't have to worry about that. But the insomnia was crazy, and so I decided that since it was so bad and it was genuinely taking a toll on me physically and in my health to try out a therapist. I tried out an online therapist, and she was amazing, she was just so sweet, so supportive, but it didn't help me. And I thought that the therapy was gonna be a quick fix, but it genuinely just did not help me. I was like going through the motions like I normally would, acting the same, and still not being able to sleep or deal with my anxiety, and then I stopped therapy because I was like, this is not working, this is just not doing anything for me. I stopped therapy and I went to trying to heal myself, and it's not like anything traumatic happened to me that it gave me this like severe anxiety, it honestly just like randomly came one day. But I went to trying to heal myself by reading my Bible, that was such a good outlet for me, and same with worship music, just everything that had to do with God and my religion helped me so so deeply, and then I opened it, I opening up to my friends and parents about it. I had to open up to my parents about it because obviously I wasn't getting sleep, so they had an idea of what was going on, but my friends I was kind of scared to tell them, but at the same time I wasn't because I had a good group of friends at the time, and I just brought up to them and told them my struggles, and being able to talk it out with them helped so so much just being able to vent to them and tell them like what I'm going through, and then being able to be like, Okay, I don't relate to you, but I understand, you know, and I feel like I was mainly scared of opening up because I was like, Okay, people aren't gonna understand it. It's like you if you know, you know, you don't understand it unless you actually go through it and how bad it is. Because a lot of people look at anxiety as just like stress, a little extra stress and being a little more overwhelmed, but it is way deeper than that. And I don't think my parents fully understood. I'm gonna kind of throw them under the bus here, but um, I don't think that they understood what it was and what how it affected me, because it affected me so much in my school and everything, and I think that they just they just thought it was my phone, of course. It's like the basic parent excuses, it's that phone, but it was something way deeper than that, and I still think to this day that they don't never fully understood it or don't fully understand it, and that's okay because it is hard to understand if you never had to go through a mental struggle, especially because when they were little, those were like not a thing. Mental health was just not talked about enough back then. And another way that helped me not get over my anxiety because it is still there very much, but helped me control it a little more was finding trust in myself, being able to learn who I was and trust who I am as a person, trust the mistakes I make, and look around me and be like, okay, those people are making mistakes too. It's okay if I make mistakes, and and it's a I can unapologetically be me. This is who I am, just finding that trust and love for myself because I couldn't do anything that I've done in my life if I didn't have the amount of love I have for myself, and that was definitely a work in progress. I'm still working on it, but those are the main things that helped me control it more, and it takes so much time. This was not an overnight quick fix, like it was not I read my Bible in the night and then woke up in the morning refreshed and ready and healed. No, it was like two years of me straight, still having sleeping issues, and still having stress issues and not being able to focus on schoolwork to where I am now, where I am constantly getting good sleep. I can still somewhat focus, but the anxiety is still there, but it takes time, it is a long journey, it is a marathon, not a sprint, okay? But here's a little bit of the bad news it's always gonna be there, it is always going to be there. You are never ever going to get rid of anxiety in any way, shape, or form, okay? It is always gonna be there, always gonna be lingering, and I hate to say that because I like to say there's light at the end of the tunnel because there is, but you have to understand that it just is not like a thing, you're healed, and then you're you're good. You still have to find a way to cope with it and use the coping mechanisms that you used when it was at its worst. I want to leave off with anxiety is real, it is real, it is not just something that we created to make us sound like pity me, pity me. It is very much real and it is a struggle that a lot of people deal with, and it is really hard to get out of it. And it is like a cycle of you hurting yourself. And just because you can't physically see it, and a doctor can't physically give you like a they can give you a diagnosis, but you know, with the chart and evidence and everything like that, doesn't mean it affects someone any less than it does. Because mental health is health, okay? And I just want to say check in on people, check in on how they're doing. If they've brought it up to you that they're dealing with a mental health issue, go talk to them about it, ask them how they're doing, and make sure that they feel like they can be honest with you. Because honesty and having someone feel that comfort in to confide in you is the greatest gift that anyone can give because you can help them so much. And if someone brings it up to you, listen to them, don't just automatically shut them up and be like, Yes, yes, I understand. Truly, truly listen to them, let them talk, let them speak their mind, and give them your full attention, and it's okay to not be able to relate to it. You don't have to relate to everyone, you just have to understand everyone. Make them feel like it is okay to open up and that you it is safe for them to open up. Thank you guys so much for listening to that episode. And let me know if you are struggling in any way, shape, or form with mental health or have any questions, reach out to me, talk to someone that you trust. Read there are so many online resources too that you can reach out to. Just find help, do not struggle in silence, okay? And I thank you guys again so much for listening. And remember to download every single episode so that you can listen to it anywhere. And remember me to follow me on all my socials and leave a review because it helps other people find the podcast. And I thank you guys again so much for listening. And remember, you can be you unapologetically. Bye guys.