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Hi everyone! I live in Chicago. I wanted to tell you a little bit about the conditions that I’m living with and how long I’ve basically been living with those.
I have anxiety and sleeping issues, I’ve dealt with anxiety ever since the beginning of college, so about six years now. I never really tried to figure out a way to fix them in college, I just dealt with them day to day. But now, as time has progressed, over the last two years, ever since I’ve been out of college I’ve learned how or tried to learn how to cope with some of these things.
So the anxiety really happens all throughout the day, and it happenpens all throughout the week. It affects me in a lot of different ways, just being in social settings, being in unfamiliar settings, being in a new work environment. Things that really would make anybody, I guess, kind of uncomfortable. But my level of anxiety just goes through the roof where it’s hard for me to even handle the situation at hand. Any stressful situation that’s overly stressful can pique my anxiety. Even just little things sometimes pique my anxiety.
The sleeping issue began a little bit before college. I have always had a problem getting to sleep and then sometimes I have a problem staying asleep. So those are things that didn’t affect me too much in college because obviously in college you don’t have a nine to five that you have to go to. You have to make it to class but then you have time to sleep afterward or take a nap in between the day.
So the last few years have really been hard for me, trying to make sure that I’m awake throughout the day to do my everyday job. And not let the sleep issue, insomnia issue affect my day-to-day life. So that’s what motivated me to find solutions or treatments for those issues.
To cope with both basically, exercising is huge for me. I’ve seen that makes a huge impact on my day-to-day life with the anxiety and the sleep. I also think that meditation has helped me a lot, being able to calm my mind before I go to sleep and make sure that I’m not using any devices. Also the meditation has really helped with my anxiety, deep breathing, things like that.
Essential oils have helped me a lot, those are very underrated. I feel like that has helped me a ton being able to use essential oils either on my wrists or near my face or just having it on my hands or putting it in your hands and smelling it. The scent really does work for me and it’s helped me to be able to in the moment relieve that anxiety. So those are just a few things that I do to cope. I don’t take any medications really, just those remedies that I just explained.
They got introduced to me through one of my childhood friend’s wife, she sells essential oils and she’s always vouched for them. So I eventually was like, well nothing that I’m doing right now, had been helping. So I thought essential oils is natural and it’s something that I could try pretty easily, the investment is small.
So if it doesn’t work, no big deal. And the essential oils have helped a decent amount.
Obviously, I still have stress, I still have anxiety, I still have sleep issues. But I will say that in the moment, when I feel like I need to calm down and if I have an essential oil or right before I go to sleep. Or even if I just put in my diffuser and have it in my room, all of those things really help me calm down. And also helps me when I need to sleep or am having trouble sleeping. So all of those things have worked decent for me, obviously it’s not cured but it’s helped.
And there are no side effects with them. Obviously exercise and meditation and deep breathing are all natural, so I don’t really see that there would be a negative side effect to those. The essential oils, not really a side effect to them but I also don’t know the long-term effects of those. Again, you don’t know the long-term effects of a lot of things. So I guess for now it’s just helped enough to the point where I see that it’s valuable to keep continuing to use it.
I just wish my conditions were just was more consistent because you never really know your anxiety levels that are going to happen that day. I wish it was more predictive to know. Obviously, I know myself and I can kind of guestimate what those situations are going to be. But to actually know, “Hey, this is going to happen today,” wishful thinking, but yeah.
And then to know that I’m going to have trouble sleeping, I know that I’m going to have trouble sleeping certain nights, but if I knew which night it would be nice. Because again, it changes per week, it depends on if different events are going on at work. Those external things basically enhance the sleeplessness and the anxiety and the stress in me.
So exercise and meditation have been huge for me. I think that that’s something that in college I really would have benefited from, for the anxiety, stress and sleeplessness. Exercising regardless wears you out, so I think that it’s just your body tiring down to the point where it makes me want to go to sleep. And it also gets out some of that anxiety and stress that I suffer from.
If I had a treatment that helped alleviate in part or in whole the effects of my condition, I feel like my life would just be a lot different. I think it would be a lot easier to deal with things. Life is hard as it is and having these issues really just causes social problems. It honestly causes problems at work and in my homelife, it affects everything.
I am pretty motivated with managing these types of things, I feel like I’ve taken more steps in the last two years than I had when I had it previously. So I’m proud of myself for managing and improving my condition. But again, obviously you could probably do more, like if I did more research on different medications and treatments. Or bringing it up more to my doctor and making them know that this is a huge thing for me.
I do talk to a psychiatrist and they know about it, but I don’t want to take prescription medications for it, so really natural is the way that I’ve chosen to go. And if it gets more severe obviously I might have to look into other things.
This does affect me when I’m alone and when others are around me. When my friends see me stressed. Or see me anxious and they don’t really know how to handle it. Just like when I’m alone, sometimes I didn’t know how to handle it.
So obviously I’ve learned how to deal with it alone, but when I’m in front of other people. There isn’t really a way to handle it. Unless I go to the bathroom and start doing deep breathing or try and meditate. So I do think it affects me more when I’m around others, versus when I’m alone.
And I will fix this for myself, preferably when I’m alone.