Anxiety?

Humans can feel a lot of emotions, such as happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, nervousness, anger, disgust, and many more. But some excessive emotions can make our body uncomfortable or even worse. So now I'm going to discuss about anxiety. I want to share my story and opinion. Maybe there are a lot of people who cannot speak out loud about this thing, just like me. But now, I will try it. I want to overcome my fear. Let's begin.

Anxiety is a feeling of worry, but that feeling is too much until we cannot handle that feeling. We are being controlled by that feeling. I'm sure everyone has their own fear and worry in their heart. Anxiety can attack anyone: kids, teenagers, and adults. For kids, maybe some of them are scared of spider, darkness, storm, and many more. For adults, their fear become more realistic, such as scared to speak in front of many people, worried about exams score, scared to make mistakes, scared to socialize, and many more. 

Not all of you, but many of you still think that anxiety is not a big deal. "Hey, don't worry to much. What are you thinking? It's no biggie." "Don't panic. Is it hard to stay calm?" "Why are you scared of this kind of thing?"

But in my opinion, you are wrong. Anxiety is a very big deal because anxiety can make our life become more difficult. You will have insomnia, cannot concentrate, and can't have fun because worried of something. Anxiety can prevent us to reach our goals. If your fear become bigger, it will be hard to control your emotions. You will need a doctor.

Anxiety is a big topic, but I will be focused on the anxiety of teens. Every teenager will go through puberty. A lot of realistic events will come to our life. We will meet a lot of new friends, more tasks, and more responsibilities. We should get a high score on an exam, but we should attend an extracurricular event, we want to be a popular student at school, but we haven't done our tasks, our mom wants us to do the dishes, and many more.

These are common signs of anxiety in teenagers:

• Negative thoughts: thoughts about being judged or embarrassed, small thoughts that grow into big worries.
• Excessive worry about physical symptoms, world problems, pollution, war, etc.
• Fearful, worried
• Panic that seems to come from nowhere
• Racing heart, tense muscles, shaking hands, tightening in the chest, etc.

It's okay to feel worried, to feel anxious, to be scared of something. It is really okay because worry is a sign: there is something dangerous coming to us. Our brain helps us to protect ourself. In our brain, there is a part named Amygdala. It's a brain part that processes memory of emotions. If your eyes or ears feel there is a threat near you, they will send a message to your brain. Amygdala will recheck your memory and tell you is it dangerous or not. If it is dangerous, your body will react automatically even without a second thought. Sometimes, you don't have time to find out is it really necessary to be scared or not.

Teenager will go through a lot of mood swings too. For example, my mood can change rapidly just because I cannot solve the question in my homework. I often feel anxious when I see a lot of people, I'm afraid that everyone will judge me, I'm worried if I can't pass the exams, I'm afraid I made a mistake, I'm afraid that I'm bothering other people.

Maybe some of you already know about anxiety and you are aware that you often feel anxious, but you don't know how to tell it, to whom should you tell it, and how to overcome it. In the next part, we will discuss about all of this.

Resources:
https://www.heysigmund.com/anxiety-in-teens/

https://kidshealth.org/en/kids/puberty.html

https://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-the-types-of-emotions-4163976

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