Now that I’m currently staring down the barrel of another round of classes, my anxiety’s bubbled back up to the surface. This time, I’m taking fourteen credit hours, wherein I’ll tackle everything from a more complicated version of Molecular Biology 101, to Chemistry 101 (despite never taking Chemistry before, outside of my 10th grade year where I was going to a private, Christian school that taught from a creationist chemistry textbook). 

Needless to say, even though I know, logically, that I will do just fine in my classes so long as I keep myself healthy and stay on top of my schoolwork, I’m still shitting bricks as though I’ve never done this stuff before. I know, logically, that my anxiety is stupid. I know, logically, that I’m just wasting time and energy playing the “what if” game before my classes. I know, logically, that I’m more than ready to tackle my classes this semester. And yet…

I am still freaking out!

In times like these, I try my hardest to slow my thoughts down, first by asking the dangerous- but not as scary- question, “why am I the way that I am?”

Why am I so anxious over stupid shit all of the time? Why am I so easily convinced that I’m a bad student and an even worse scientist, despite having literally zero evidence for it? Why can’t I just shut my brain up and think logically 100% of the time? Why does it feel like everyone else has everything figured out, but I don’t? Why do I compare myself to other students and convince myself that I’m the dumb one in the group, even though that’s almost never the case? 

Why, why, why? 

Truth is, I don’t know the answers to those questions. I have my hypotheses (I’d say theories, but a scientific theory is a fact, while a hypothesis is an idea that’s yet to have much evidence for it). But, I have no answers. Frankly, it’s kind of a waste of time to try to figure that shit out at this point. 

That said, what I will say is this: I’m an imperfect human being. I’m only 24 years old. I have a lot of experience with getting sick and dying. But I don’t have nearly as much experience with staying healthy and living. I also inherited a ton of anxiety from both of my parents, so naturally, I’m gonna be more anxious. The list goes on. 

Long story short, I am the way that I am, because that’s just the way that I am. I’m certainly working on improving myself and doing my best every single day. But, I’ll never be perfect. I’ll never be totally anxiety-free. I’ll always have a tendency to get scared and withdraw from the world. 

However, giving into my fear and withdrawing from the world is exactly what I should not do, even though I’m currently losing my mind over the prospect of going back to school tomorrow after a two-week break. 

So, now the question becomes: how do I prevent my anxiety from taking over?