It’s silent. You wouldn’t even know I have it on the outside but on the inside it’s loud. I am so overwhelmed that I can’t even manage the simplest of tasks. “Every step I take feels a little shaky... It’s such a weird feeling that you wouldn’t know unless you have it to an extreme point ... You feel like everyone is looking at you” (Clark). It’s a physical feeling. Your chest tightens, your head feels cloudy and the effort behind every breath is with much effort. Waking up in the middle of the night, shaking and crying, feeling alone in a dark hole; the inside of somebody’s life you don’t see — anxiety. “According to the National Institutes of Health, nearly 1 in 3 of all adolescents ages 13 to 18 will experience an anxiety disorder” (McCarthy). A study completed in 2007 compares to a study conducted in 2012 where the rate of teenage anxiety had gone up 20%. These statistics have also been paralleled to the rate of hospital admissions for suicidal teenagers, which has also doubled in the past decade. The impacts of teenage anxiety is really important because it affects our relationships and our health. Navigating the challenges of anxiety is demanding when us, teenagers, venture into a journey of self discovery. The presence of anxiety makes it harder.

Often, anxiety is swept under the carpet as fear or as a weakness; people lack knowledge of the power of anxiety, which causes them to think it’s unimportant. Is it someone’s personality? Is it an illness? Is it a normal sensation? That's why it's important to differentiate what normal anxiety is from what an anxiety disorder is. Normal anxiety is an emotion that we all experience in stressful situations. For example, let's say, you have a major test tomorrow. This will probably make you feel a little bit anxious because you need to get a good mark. Mostly the pressured feeling that you get is good because it influences you to work hard to get that good mark. Anxiety helps us meet our deadlines and deal with emergencies because of the pressure it puts on us. But when this anxiety is taken to the extreme and appears in situations which don't have a specific reason for it to arise, then that's when you know you might have an anxiety disorder.

This can stem from a combination of things such as changes in your brain and environmental stress, and even your genes — when the disorder runs in an individual's family, this can be linked to faulty circuits in the brain that controls fear and other emotions. To add on, life events and stresses contribute greatly to anxiety. Daily activities can also be linked to anxiety disorders such as drinking too much caffeine or quitting addictive habits.

If you have anxiety, it doesn’t mean you have a mental illness, you are just an individual that doesn’t have their needs met yet. Thus, I believe that for every individual person there are different ways to overcome anxiety; everyone’s treatment is different based on their needs. In order to help myself, I find things that make me happy. When I feel anxious, I surround myself with others or blast music because it makes me feel better rather than locking myself in my room, along with my emotions and fear. Studies show that doing the following helps overcome the symptoms of anxiety:

Cutting your caffeine intake — caffeine is a mood altering drug that in the end can make your symptoms worse. Next, exercising aids in releasing chemicals in the brain that cut stress and improve your mood. To add on, in order to overcome anxiety one can try the methods to improve the effects of anxiety as well as looking into medicinal ways. Many antidepressants can work for anxiety disorders or even therapy such as psychotherapy or cognitive behavioral therapy. Physcotherapy addresses the emotional response to mental illness. A specific branch is cognitive behavioral therapy which teaches one how to recognize and change thought patterns and behaviors that trigger deep anxiety or panic.

If you can’t find a way to overcome your anxiety, the first step is to find the triggers and what they might be. Emotional triggers for instance, can influence you mentally and be a cause for anxiety. Personally, a trigger for me is when people scare me. By understanding the triggers,

one can avoid the harmful effects of anxiety because you can find a way to overcome the triggers or identify the triggers and avoid these triggers.

Going to a therapist or receiving medical treatment from doctors are one of the ways that studies prove lead to successful treatment. To add on, helplines such as No Panic are good resources to calm one down.

Finally, figuring out a healthy way that works best for you. This varies due to personal reasons and happiness — finding what keeps me calm and happy is a personal way I believe that helps me with anxiety. To continue with the aforementioned point, finding the right people to be around will help you — ensuring that you have the right people around you that keep you happy and will support you no matter what are the people you need to keep in your life. Essentially, those who will weep for you when you die and will long for when you are alive are the people that will help you with anxiety.

Anxiety isn’t a choice. I wish people knew how badly I want to be okay like everyone else. How hard it is to be affected by something that breaks me everyday. The power of anxiety on teenagers is a legitimate concern because if left untreated, it can lead to extremely negative consequences that can impact a person's daily life. Therefore, we must all come to a solution so that anxiety doesn’t take over our lives. We need to start listening to the loud signals on the inside, because they're telling us something we really need to hear. It's only when we truly listen to these symptoms of anxiety, that we're going to begin to find a solution.

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Works Cited

Cherney, Kristeen. “12 Effects of Anxiety on the Body.” Healthline, Healthline Media, 29 March 2019, https://www.healthline.com/health/anxiety/effects-on-body#1. Accessed 4 December 2019.

Clark, Minou and Singh, Kyli. “13 Stories That Perfectly Embody What Anxiety Feels Like.”

Huffington Post, 12 September 2017. https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/stories on-anxiety_n_570d27a3e4b01422324a4269. Accessed 4 December 2019.

Felman, Adam. “Anxiety: Causes and Diagnosis.” Medical News Today, MediLexicon International, 25 October 2018, https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/ 323456.php#takeaway. Accessed 4 December 2019.

Higuera, Valencia. “8 Effective Ways to Fight Anxiety Without Drugs”. Healthline, Healthline Media, 22 Mar. 2019, https://www.healthline.com/health/effective-ways-to fight-anxiety-without-drugs#1.

Lillis, Charlotte. “Common Anxiety Triggers: How to Manage and Avoid”. Medical News Today, MediLexicon International, 22 Aug. 2019, https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/ articles/326134.php. Accessed 4 December 2019.

McCarthy, Claire. “Anxiety in Teens is Rising: What's Going On?” Healthy Children, 20 November 2019. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/health-issues/conditions/ emotional-problems/Pages/Anxiety-Disorders.aspx. Accessed 4 December 2019.

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