What Does Anxiety Feel Like To You? active chat!

My names Olivia, I just turned twenty, just moved away to school, and I'm falling apart. I guess it was the crushing realization that my teenage years were over, but that "angsty" depression and constant state of anxiety and dread I've always chalked up to hormones and boredom and being an irrational teenager didn't just magically go away- that being a little older and a little more occupied hasn't cured me. A new city and new school and new heights I feel this fear and sadness and fogginess and dread reaching is killing me. I don't want to be the crazy adult, the weird recluse, the scared little girl. I like that I feel things intensely, and that depression an anxiety has made the good days so good, but being able to appreciate the good doesn't have to require such little amounts of it.

I want to be happier, feel freeer. I hate the way I feel most minutes of the day. What does it feel like to you?

To me, it's this feeling of something very deep inside me being wrong, I get the feeling of something my mind is keeping from me- like repressed memories- and something I'm trying to avoid deep down. It's a very scary twisted bad feeling, like I am bad, or something very bad has happended to me or is going to- and the way I can't put my finger on it makes it so much worse. This constant fear then manifests in different ways- racing heart, panic attacks, hypochondria like crazyy, bad dreams, constant derealization that's a whole other thread in itself. I still love myself and my life, and consider myself a positive person, but when anxiety has a hold on me (which is too often) I feel completely hopeless.

What does yours feel like? What helps?