Normalizing Panic

I want to apologize for the lack of writing I have done the last number of months. There are still series I want to write and different topics I want to cover, but it has been hard to balance work, grad school, and my social life on top of writing this blog. I am going to try to post certain posts, like Quote Mondays more and will occasionally do a Business Wednesday and/or Random Friday. But let's move on to the actual post.

“Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.” ~ Anaïs Nin

 Since June, my life seems like it has been in a constant blur. There have been so many changes in my life, all which are good, but have had no real time to process these immediate changes. This has thus led me down a destructive road of bottling up my emotions and thus causing panic attacks. If you recall, I wrote a blog post a couple of years ago about my very first panic attack. Since then, I have experienced them more frequently and it is no fun. I'm actually pretty good at picking up on the signs of the beginning stages of this attack. Typically I do not go into full-blown attacks, but every once in a while, I'm unable to prevent it. 

“Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.” ~ Anaïs Nin

I'm not sure if you (whoever is reading this) have experienced a panic attack, but you literally feeling like you are dying. The description that Anaïs Nin gives is a perfect description of what it feels like. It feels like you are being dragged down and have no hope of being able to pull yourself out of it.

Now this is typically the part of the post where I give some type of positive message of how I’m combating this or some self-awareness moment, but not this time. I just think we need to speak more about the fact that people have these types of anxiety.

For example, I have had full on conversations with friends about how normal having these types of attacks are. We have different personality traits and how we react to situations, yet we all have these panic attacks and believe they are a part of life. This is kind of messed up since we are in are early-mid 20s and believe panic attacks are just part of life.

I believe we think this is normal since we have now put extreme pressure on kids at such an early age. Test scores, being the successful athlete, talking about how you need to be in a certain amount of extracurricular so you can get scholarships and be able to get into a good school to then be able to get into a good Master program and so on. This is the crap and pressure that is being fed at such an early age and it is ridiculous.

Pressure is not bad, but the high level is just insane since it takes passion out of people. It kills the love that people can have for learning or the arts or sports or life in general.

Anxiety is the greatest killer of love and passion since it completely drains a person and will sooner or later make them numb.


So maybe there is a lesson in this. If you realize that you are experiencing this amount of panic and anxiety, then you need to step back so you don’t lose you passion and love of life.