Dealing with Anxiety

        When I arrived on campus that fateful day in late August, I knew one person.  That one person was my freshman roommate.  We went to the same high school and had mutual friends, but didn’t know each other very well.  I remember that summer before moving in to our shared dorm room I started to freak out a bit.  “I barely know her!” I thought. “What if we don’t get along? What if she makes friends and I don’t? What if I’m alone everyday? What if? What if? What if?!”  Of course, all of these frightening ideas turned out to be just that- ideas.  Once we moved in we clicked immediately and she is still one of my favorite people to this day.  

        What I learned from this experience has been a common thread throughout my entire college career.  Spending months having meltdowns about how I wasn’t going to have any friends in college was just me finding something to worry about and latching on.  Months of worry was dispelled within the first minutes of us moving in.  When you begin to worry about a small detail it can begin to consume your life.  It begins a chain reactions that builds, builds, builds until you feel like you can’t breathe in anymore.  I’ve learned that instead of drowning in my unnecessary anxieties to relax and take it day by day.  Once I feel that pit of dread in my stomach I’ve learned to take a step back and just think.  Is what I’m so worried about ACTUALLY that big of a deal?  Will it even be something I think about in a year, month, or even few weeks time? Nine times out of ten I can find solace in this practice.  Once I take a large scale view at my issues it’s easy to identify if I am simply overreacting.  Something I’ve noticed after using this method for a few years is that I often find a reason to rejoice in this seeds of anxiety. How lucky I am to have such small worries!  How greedy I am to allow these nonissue to consume my everyday thoughts!  

        A hard but important lesson that the universe has taught me over the years is that it is very common to over react to issues when they are the only obstacles in your life.  Because of this it is very easy to blow problems up into wild propositions.  But just step back and think,  is this huge problem actually going to impair my day to day life for a long period of time?  Or am I making small issues larger because one obstacle is too easy to navigate?  I can assure you the answer is the latter more often then you’d think. This is not to say that it’s selfish to worry about small things when others have to worry about larger issues, but it’s instead a strategy of ease.  Once you begin to live in this mindset that even you largest problems are someone else’s dreams, it’s easy to grow more thankful for your surroundings and in turn more grounded in life!  You become more grateful for the life you live and your anxieties often diminish into what they really are: small blimps that you CAN and WILL overcome!

Love, 

Madeline