My anxiety story...

So i've never really publically spoken about my anxiety before, so this is a tad weird for me but I hope you can relate to me or at least understand in some form or another. This is a big step for me as only one or two people know of this, so in advance thank you for listening!

I have had anxiety for around 3 years-ish now and it has changed my life completely. Not an hour of the day goes by without me worrying about something, it is a truly horrible feeling. I thought by now i'd have found a way to control it but to be honest I feel as if it's getting worse.

I think maybe the largest affect of this is that I have extremely bad social anxiety, due to this I have lost social contact with friends, admittingly I will still text some of them once or twice but this isn't very common it's normally once a month. So seeing them out and about having fun on social media really cripples me inside, but yet I feel more comfortable staying in my house than going out and socialising, so it's kinda a vicious circle I get myself into.

I have also noticed affects at work, i'm extremely quiet in my workplace and basically feel horrible whenever I am there, I get sweats on, get paranoid that I'm smelling bad, can't think of anything to talk about to people, worry about my uni grades (I work in an office full time as an apprentice doing a qualification at the same time) - I will be honest I have a hell of a workload to deal with which can prove stressful too, the competitiveness with the other apprentices is also very real and feel like I am just at the bottom of the pack and not wanted by anyone because I am the quiet one and not much of a character like the other apprentices who seem experts at socialising. Although I am getting the higher college grades (I think anyway), it just feels I'm never going to be taken on by the company at the end of the apprenticeship due to how I am as a person and my personality.

Sorry if i'm boring you with all of this if you've read this far, I really need to just get 3 years of anxiety off my chest and talk to people about it.

So another thing... the shops. Yes I am actually afraid to go and walk to the shop and buy something. It's such a strange sensation but actually plucking up the courage to leave my house and go to the shop is such a stress. I'm glad I still live with my parents because otherwise I would probably have starved to death. It's not only the shops it's also things like picking up a phone (or calling people myself) or answering the door.

I've always just kind of self diagnosed off the internet with forums like this explaining anxiety because i'm too scared to go and seek help at the doctors (shock) normally it helps ease my pain just reading people's stories and actually relating to people than curling up on my bed feeling like my stomach is on fire, i'm not sure this is related but I can never eat in the mornings either - come 10/11am I can eat but in the morning I can't physically bring up and appetite because I feel if I eat anything i'll just throw it back up which annoys me because i'd love to eat breakfast (the most important meal of the day) but my body cannot physically handle it.

I'm sure there's lots more things that I can waffle on about but these are some of my main points that I suffer from on a daily basis.

I try to keep it as positive as possible but I really do not feel that way inside and need to throw this out there.

If you've made it this far on my post, thank you so much for listening to me and undertaking my story. Any tips on how I can ease my symptoms or help my anxiety please comment as I would be extremely grateful!

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