As many of you may or may not know, when I was younger, I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. During my sophomore year in high school I was experiencing anxiety attacks and I was not coping with the new stresses and adjustments. I went to therapy for almost a year, where I learned that sometimes, some people don’t realize how intimate anxiety is. I was often questioned on why I thought it was necessary to pursue therapy when my day to day life was seemingly fine. But honestly, it wasn’t. I struggled with self-image, motivation, and sometimes just dealing with the stress of high school. The person I was seeing for therapy often didn’t think I needed to see her, so she never prescribed me any medication, forcing me to develop coping skills that may not have always been helpful.
Now that I am a freshman in college, I have learned that you really don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. But just because you have that freedom doesn’t mean that you can take advantage of it all the time. I had a huge paper due the day before Thanksgiving break starts, and I had very little done on it by the time I was planning to update the blog. I am a student who truly wants to make my professor proud, but at the same time, I have been known to procrastinate until the very last minute because it is so overwhelming. That is my current state. I don’t want to work at all, better yet work hard. But I don’t want my professor to think that I am incapable of writing a paper for her. It’s a struggle. So in this battle with my head, I have taken some time to myself. I have not uploaded because I feel like I can’t do anything I want to do until after I do what I’m supposed to do. And frankly, I didn’t have the motivation to do what I didn’t want to do. So here is the dilemma. I had a blog that hasn’t been updated in weeks and a paper that is half-written. And no motivation to do either one of those things. This is a symptom of my anxiety. I am avoiding everything to avoid one thing. Which is not a great way to cope, but it’s what I did. I turned the paper in and I am okay now. The moral of the story is, sometimes things have to be prioritized for you to do it, but other times, you don’t want to do the first thing on your list of priorities, so nothing gets done. And that’s okay.
1 Comment
Phillip Jackson
11/27/2016 08:13:00 am
You got this gabby
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AuthorGabrielle Willingham is a young Arkansan woman who sees the importance of simultaneous cynicism and optimism. Gabrielle is currently working on a MA in Communication with a focus in gender studies and political science. Archives
January 2021
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