A lot of people would say they understand what anxiety is.   A lot of people say they suffer from anxiety.  This word is extremely over used on a daily basis. I am anxious, she is anxious, we are all anxious. They call it that feeling before a final exam, or the nauseous sensation before sports try-outs; but do they really know? What really is anxiety? Can I even explain it?
Even the word anxiety sounds stressful. These feelings haunt me everyday.  I do not remember when it started, but I don’t recall a time when it was not there.  This is not a pleasant experience.  Anxiety is a feeling inside that makes you doubt everything about yourself.  It is internal and is very heavy like a brick and it weighs you down. Anxiety is that heaviness that wakes you up at three in the morning trying to convince you that the essay you wrote the night before is substandard.  It won’t let you go to sleep until you re-write the entire essay.  It enjoys making you think that you are not good enough.  It takes your biggest fears and stresses and makes them a reality. It is kind of like a fire.  When a fire is fed with more wood, it grows bigger and bigger, until it is a massive spectacle of bright orange heat.  When anxiety is given a worry, or a fear, it will get bigger and bigger, until the point of feeling as if there is a massive fire burning inside of you.
Anxiety is very hard to control.  It will not tell you when it will come.  It is quite spontaneous.  Anxiety just takes over whenever it feels like it.  You could almost consider anxiety to be its own person.  You are sitting there planning in your head everything you have to do that night.  If you just for one second have a doubt, anxiety swoops in like a hawk killing its prey.  It tears you apart.  Anxiety loves anything that could possibly cause you stress.  It is very good at convincing you that your friends secretly do not like you, or that you are overweight, or that you are failing out of school.  Anything that has ever bothered you, anxiety will remind you of.  It never gives a break from feeling stressed.
An anxiety attack is another story.  I was sitting in math class learning about graphing parabolas in Algebra 2.  Now I for one, found this extremely complicated.  To graph a parabola consists of many steps and if you mess up one of the steps it ends up being completely wrong.  This begins to get a bit stressful.  For some reason it was next to impossible for me to get every step correct.  There was always a mistake.  Big or small, the mistakes would always be there.  Every single problem was wrong. Why me? Why math? Why does everyone understand this so quickly, and I am still trying to understand what a parabola even looks like?  My heart starts racing.  My hands start to shake.  The room all of a sudden feels like the Sahara Desert.  My sweatshirt feels constricting around my arms.  I try to express how I am feeling in words, but my brain cannot form them. The babbling begins.  This. Help. Why. No. But. I can’t. How. Please help. I tightly grasp my pencil and my knuckles turn white.  I look at my paper and I still have not answered one question.  Who knew one math problem could cause so many feelings at once? Well I do. 
How do you cope with anxiety?  Well, first of all you have to take deep breaths.  This is the first step in helping yourself.  You have to step away from whatever is causing you the uneasiness.  Next, you have to think of something that you are excited about or something that makes you happy.  Such as something fun you are doing this weekend, or how your mom is cooking your favorite food for dinner tonight, or even how Christmas is 55 days away.  Focusing all your energy on something that makes you happy will help the stress go away.  There is no point in letting it get to you because stress does not control you.
  I have just returned from taking a walk to the water fountain.  As a stare at the math problems again, now half of class gone; I close my eyes and take a final deep breath.  I ask Ms. Kenney, my teacher for help.  As usual, she tells me to calm down and that I can do it.  But can I? I look at the example problem with a finally cleared head.  Thinking through the steps in my head, I approach the first problem.  Attempting to stay calm I begin to try to solve it.  Checking my work I try to catch any mistakes.  I call Ms. Kenney teacher back over.  She looks over my work. Success.  This feeling of accomplishment is inexplicable.  After all that stress I finally get a problem right.
Anxiety can waste a lot of energy.  A lot of energy you could be using to do other things.  It can steal happiness like a bad dream.  Your job is to make sure you wake yourself up in time to realize that it is just in your HEAD.