This, Too, Shall Pass
October 7, 2022
Author: Sabrina Sugg
Editor: Jessica Isser
It is strange how great of a role anxiety has played in my life. I have never taken the time to examine the impact it has had until I sat down to write this. Anxiety has been there every. single. day. I first found out what anxiety was when I was only six years old and began going to therapy because I had developed an unrelenting fear of storms. A few months prior to my first session, my parents and I were in the car on our way home from my cousin’s wedding, when we saw a tornado begin to descend from the sky over a field to our left. Although we ended up arriving home safely, this moment changed something in my six-year-old mind.
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain”
-Vivian Greene
As time passed, my anxiety grew stronger and began to overtake elements of my life that had once defined me. When I was eleven, I loved to read aloud in class (in retrospect I think I may have related a bit too much to Hermione) and would always volunteer to sing at the school masses (yep, Catholic school girl, too). However, one day I was reading in my English class when my voice broke and my hands started to shake. I quickly finished the page and tried to slow my breathing. This had never happened before. And, apparently, it’s rare for an individual to remember the moment that they became afraid of something so vividly and so suddenly. Unfortunately, I do remember that moment I became afraid of public speaking. It was as though a switch flipped inside of my brain: one second I was reading confidently aloud, the next I was unable to answer a question in class without feeling nervous.
Another seven years passed by and I found myself sitting in the Bursley dining hall with one of my guy friends when I said something along the lines of “oh yeah, that makes me super nervous.” His response was one that I had never received before: “I actually don’t think that I have ever felt nervous before, what’s it like?” I’m pretty sure I froze for a second to understand what he had said — of course I was fully aware that I get nervous more often than the average person, but to have someone say that they’ve never felt nervous was mind-bending.
I began by explaining that I have anxiety, which means that feelings of nervousness will just randomly occur, even if there is not an impending event to cause it. There are certain aspects of my personality and daily routine that I consider to be “trademarks” of my anxiety: I am often late; I constantly have music playing; I tend to apologize more than necessary and place immense value on relationships; I turn down opportunities for no “good” reason sometimes; I perform poorly on exams.
This list has a wide array of things, some of which impact those around me, others that are common in many people for many different reasons. However, I want to shed light on how each of these aspects circles back to having anxiety:
I tend to run late because I get nervous about driving and have to take a few minutes to convince myself that I will probably get there safely, then, once I start to leave I forget my keys because I was previously distracted by the nervousness.
Playing music distracts me from the anxiety that comes when there are no other thoughts or sounds to occupy my attention.
I get incredibly nervous if someone is mad at me because I easily overthink the situation and feel immense guilt, so I try to avoid that at all costs.
Sometimes I feel physically sick because something has made me nervous, so I miss out on experiences.
Exams come with multiple different elements of pressure, from choosing the right answer to finishing the test in time; they simply set me up for failure regardless of my preparation.
“You can handle anything in the moment”
I love this quote because it’s extremely true — in the moment, you have to be able to handle whatever is happening, so you do. With anxiety, I constantly find myself worrying about something that could potentially happen in the future. This statement reminds me that I cannot do anything about that in the present, so I need to just leave it for my future self to handle. And, as the title of this story says, while dealing with anxiety in the moment, I just constantly remind myself that this, too, shall pass.
Image: by Patricia Thomas, On the Edge of the Storm (taken 07/16/14)
