Living With Anxiety | Personal Blog

I haven't been documenting myself lately because there hasn't really been much to share in the past year. I figure, at least once in a while, I should come back here. Really this blog is just for myself. I guess I don't mind if people read it. But I would prefer if people I know don't read it. It's a weird request to have. I guess I just don't want people to judge me. I've been having some very unusual feelings lately. I've made observations about myself that almost feel like the descent of who I was in the past. Not necessarily the normal "growing up" changes, just the slow recession of someone who is dealing with mental illness. I guess if I someday go insane and end up in a psyche ward or in a prison, then these blogs can be looked back on to see what went wrong. That would make life a bit easier, right? It started all the way back in middle school, I think. For context, before middle school, I was very normal. I had lots of friends, talked

 I am a teenager. That means I have to slowly transition from being a child into being an adult. As impatient yet unexcited I am to become an adult, it really hasn't been sticking in my mind for more than a few seconds. Unfortunately, I still have to prepare for that moment, in which it is forced to stay in my brain for up to several hours. What's the best example of this? Driving. If you're an adult, driving is probably just a thing you do  whenever you need to go somewhere. For someone with an anxiety disorder and who has never drove more than a golf cart, it's a little bit of a different experience. Maybe you remember from when you were first learning to drive, it's a little scary. Last year, during the summer, I learned how to drive. Well, I learned the essentials on how to drive. It started with an online course where we had to spend 3 hours on an online chat learning about how to stop at a red light. After about 2 weeks, we took an exam. Despite what seemed li

 If there's one thing I'm rather ashamed to admit about myself, it's that I can't handle myself well under confusion. If something just doesn't sit quite right in my head (or at all), I'll get extremely stressed, sometimes to the point of breaking down. Unfortunately, I have to face confusing situations often, but thankfully, most of them end in comprehension and no tears being shed. Of course, it's not like people don't get stressed under confusion, it's just the way of how I handle it that I'm embarrassed of. Any normal person would probably start getting fumed, or step back to think about something for a moment. I rarely do the latter. But alongside anger, immense confusion will usually end in me completely giving up and crying about it. Unfortunately, that's what happened yesterday. Twice. One a little more entitled than the other. In my last post, I mentioned how I went to the opticians to get my eyes checked. I'm unsure if I mention

 I am a glasses wearer. Maybe that surprises you, maybe you already knew and it didn't surprise you. Regardless, that unfortunately means I have to go through an extra appointment every couple of years, known as the opticians.  Essentially, the opticians are similar to dentists or hair saloons, in that they treat one specific part of your body. In the case of the opticians, it's your eyes. More specifically, they try to allow partially blind people (like me) to see better. I'm nearsighted, meaning I can see things up close nice and clear, but things farther away are completely blurry. Blurry to the point where I couldn't read something 10 feet away from me.  Although this sounds bad, it's actually very common. My eyes are perfectly healthy, they just bend light in a different way. In the usual opticians appointment, they'll take quick pictures of your eyes, then test which lenses work to improve your vision, then finally allowing you to pick out a brand new pair

 I found it funny how, depending on the people I'm around, I almost change who I am. I've talked to my dad about this, who also tends to get nervous when socializing, and he's agreed with me. Of course, I'm not sure how normal this is to other people. It would make sense that you would almost allow yourself to make more mistakes around people you trust, since you trust them enough to know they won't hold you against that. However, that's not all that changes between trusted people and other people. I've noticed over my time on the internet that I seem to divide myself into two or three different personalities, depending on what the social situation is. It's weird how I basically act completely different to people I trust compared to people I haven't spoken to prior. The reason I split myself into three categories is because I tend to have three main settings: internet strangers, real life strangers, and then trusted people.  Honestly, I find it inter

 I would consider myself a paranoid person, but I usually try to give different impressions to other people. I try to make it seem like I'm capable, able to take down challenges with no fear. Unfortunately, some more personal people know that I'm not at all like that. I'm actually scared of a lot of things. I would even say I have multiple phobias, though maybe I haven't discovered all of them. It's mostly a result of my obsession with watching/listening to true crime stories. The stories that go into great detail about how someone was kidnapped, murdered, or some other horrible third thing. It also has a bit to do with personal experiences.  In this post, I plan to go over my fears, rank them on how much it affects me, and explain why I'm afraid of them. This is just to give a bit more insight into me as a person, and giving you a general idea of how I tend to overdramatize situations. Or, in the case of phobias, having no reason to be afraid of it, but yet I a

  My exams were, as I expected, not the issue themselves. The real issue was figuring out where the hell I had to go to get there. It seemed clear to me, what the staff told me. They gave me a room number and then the media center. I figured, "oh, the room will be easy to find" and "the media center, I don't even know where to start". It turned out to be the exact opposite. What the staff gave me was a 4-digit long room number (make a mental note of this), which seemed a little strange to me. I had been in the building before, and all the numbers were only 3 digits. I figured the first number, two, was an indication of what floor it was on, and then the remaining three digits were just the room number. Or, in a much less logical situation, the staff just made a bunch of typos. When I got to the school, I had the number memorized. That wasn't the issue at hand. I started by going upstairs and looking for the room with the last 3 digits I was given, as indeed,

  It is the weekend, and last week was officially the last day of actual school. That means that next week will be the final week of school altogether. The final week, of course, means exams are coming. Last week, we had a teacher-made exam for my first period, meaning that I didn't have to go into the school to take it. Since I take online school, it was a breeze, since, admittedly, I had the ability to look through some of my notes. There weren't necessarily any rules saying I couldn't, so I did. The test was relatively a breeze, and it actually showed me my score at the end, which luckily showed that I passed. The first out of three exams are done. Unfortunately, that may have been the easiest I'll have it. Next week, this Monday, I will have to go into the school to take the other two exams. The unfortunate part comes both in how early I have to get to the school, and how long I have to stay in the school. I have to arrive there at around 7am, which doesn't soun

  I decided, after a little bit of thought, that it may be a good idea to give a bit of insight into what it's like to be cursed with severe social anxiety. I plan to mostly use this blog for the purpose of sharing wild events that happen in my day-to-day life, but also to kind of explain what being in my shoes is like. I'll start with a bit of an introduction. I go by maniCARNY on the internet, but my real name is very much out in the open. I won't restate it here, you can find it on your own. I have been diagnosed with social anxiety, and have gone through therapy sessions for a year, starting in 2020 and ending in 2021. I left therapy mainly due to feeling I was officially "cured" from anxiety, and was ready to take the leads myself, but ironically, I also left because I was getting tired of mentally prepping myself to begin and get through each session. School had already been enough turmoil, and I was about ready to give myself a break. Over the course of the