PHOTO COURTESY OF CBTBALTIMORE.COM

Graphic depicting a girl facing anxiety.

You don’t suffer from anxiety; it’s actually the best thing that can happen to you. 

Among college students, anxiety takes various forms, such as parallel parking, hidden homework assignments and avoiding booths set up in the student union. College is a challenging time as students bear the weight of having to succeed or else dampen their entire future. As a student, your response to anxiety now can impact your future. The conventional conclusion is that students should try to rid themselves of anxiety so they can succeed. Alternatively, we could become grateful for it.

Millions of people suffer from depression at different levels of severity. A quick search will reveal that many individuals who take medication for their anxiety also take antidepressants. So perhaps when fleeing from the feelings of anxiety, we shut out too many emotions and lose what makes us truly alive. People rarely enjoy feeling anxious, but can we even imagine a life without those feelings?

Imagine starting a new job and instead of getting that nauseating feeling that keeps you up all night, you feel indifferent. You go to work and come home and it’s just like any other day. Imagine you have a test coming up and you study as much as you need to without worrying about it. When the results come back, you feel no relief because you are already relieved. You don’t get butterflies from first dates, you don’t feel the blood rush of talking to new people and there’s no adrenaline when interacting with strangers.

This “paradise” without anxiety lacks color. How will you feel the satisfaction of making it through your shift? How will you appreciate that moment when you turn an assignment in and can finally breathe? How can you enjoy the intensity of new love before you become too comfortable to be nervous? Without the anxiety of strangers, how can you welcome the comfort of friends? We should stop suppressing anxiety and, instead, feel it fully. If we believe it’s not just the highs but also the lows that make us alive, then we can see anxiety in a different light.

For many, socializing is like riding a bike, something that comes naturally, but for those with social anxiety, it can be more akin to speaking a foreign language. We can dull the pressure of anxiety with exposure, as it’s a very momentum-based thing to conquer. If we take our feelings in stride, we can chip away at the boulder of fear in our hearts and experience greater highs and lows while learning to feel less stressed every day.

In the end, anxiety isn’t something to erase from our lives. Instead, we should understand it as beneficial. It often gives our moments meaning—the nerves before a first date, the weight before a big exam, the rush after pushing through. By embracing anxious feelings instead of running from them, we allow ourselves to fully experience what it means to be alive.

Categories: Opinion