With my recent discovery of Dan's issues with anxiety, I've decided to share my stories as well as learn about my fellow Duders stories and the way they cope with it as well. I've been struggling with anxiety since I was in 6th grade. I am 18 now, and I didn't realize what was going on back then. I was living in Arkansas at the time; my family is in military so we move around a lot. I had to move in the middle of my 6th grade year to Arkansas, and let's just say the schools there are not the best. Throughout that school year, I was struggling with making friends as I was the new kid, and nerdy, and I never really fit in there. I hated going there. I was so miserable that my body forced me to be sick, so I wouldn't have to go. I would be fine in the car ride, but the second I stepped on school grounds I felt uncontrollably sick. Now that I look back, I realize that I was starting symptoms of anxiety, but eventually the year was over, and my mother transferred me to a better school and I was fine for my 7th grade year. Then we moved again to where I currently live, and my 8th grade year was fine, but my freshman year of high school was definitely when I realized what was really going on. That year, I decided to take a lot of honors courses because it was what my 8th grade teachers were recommending. This soon proved a bit much for me. I was ill prepared for the amount of work this school required for honors classes. This generated many panic attacks for me when I would receive grades back from teachers. I went from being an A student in my general ed classes to a C- student in the honors classes. This put a hurt on my self confidence that I couldn't handle it. I was struggling all throughout the year especially in math. Then, towards the latter half of the school year, I found out my father was being deployed to Afghanistan for a year. This was putting stress on me and my family as we had to prepare for the next year to come by moving into a smaller house to save money as well as some other things.
Then came the end of the year, and I received notice that I had failed math for that year and had to retake it over the summer. This lead to a full panic attack and a break down from me. My mother then made me an appointment to see a psychiatrist, and then I started taking medicine for anxiety as well as ADD, which I also discovered I had, and that was causing some of the stress from school as well. The next year came, and I was a Sophomore in high school. Things were going better for me; the medication was helping and I was doing better in school. My father was still gone, but he was doing well over in Afghanistan, and he said he would be home before we knew it. Most of the year went by, and it was about 4 months before my father was to return.Then, we got news from our landlord that they were canceling our lease, and we needed to move out before the end of the month. This caused stress for the entire family. We had to move to a tiny apartment that we had to live in for the next few months. This was causing me a lot of stress having to move again since we had just moved 9 months ago. I was starting to suffer from panic attacks again. I was still seeing a psychiatrist which was helping, but I was only able to go once a month or so. Eventually, I started suffering from insomnia as well, and this was adding more stress to me. I couldn't sleep at all, and this made me very stressed out, agitated, and caused memory loss for me, causing me to struggle in school again. I barely made it through the end of the school year. I then went to the doc, who prescribed me medicine to help me sleep. From then on, I was able to sleep; I felt better and I was doing better in school.
My father returned from Afghanistan, and we then moved to a new house. I was fortunate enough to be able to finish my high school career at the same high school I had been going to. Since then I have been doing better, I learned to cope with it, and the medicine was definitely helping as well, as I now rarely have any panic attacks. This is how its been for the past 2 years. I have been doing great in school, and I will soon be going to college next year, which I am very excited about. My anxiety is still there, but I have been able to control it.
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