Anxiety Around School
By: Victor Olmedo
Walking into class late, “everyone is looking at me, why are they staring?” walking through the halls “oh my god everyone is looking at my hair I forgot to do it this morning!” “Everyone is making fun of me, oh god!” Many students struggle with the anxiety of people watching them in school, feeling like everyone is talking about them.
These feelings of anxiety are surprisingly common, people that seem like they have everything under control still get anxious about people watching them. Everybody wants to be accepted by people around them so it's a natural fear to be seen as “weird.” so when someone walks into class late and everybody looks at them they naturally get nervous or scared.
Jane Doe is a student at Washingtonville that has suffered from social anxiety for all her life and has chosen to stay anonymous. Anxiety does not need to be triggered by any specific event, Jane believes that “people always know when I’m nervous or intimidated” which goes hand in hand with feeling like she is being watched. She was kind enough to share a story that really shows how anxiety can affect someone. “Anytime I walked outside, for years, it felt like anybody I walked past would just turn around and try to hurt me, it felt like everyone was always watching. . . waiting. It took me 3 or 4 years to be able to go outside on my own and just walk around because I was so terrified of something happening that I physically couldn’t bring myself to go out.”
Jane’s story is certainly a scary one that is more on the extreme end of things but it is still scarily common as many therapists would be aware of. Jerilyn Donovan is a licensed therapist who often works with clients that suffer from severe anxiety not dissimilar to Jane. Jerilyn was willing to share some techniques to help with anxiety. “There are various strategies and coping skills you can use to help manage your anxiety symptoms from various types of anxiety such as social and general anxiety etc. . . Calming and Relaxation skills such as, everybody’s favorite deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, grounding and mindfulness techniques.” These techniques are all easy to use and effective at reducing anxiety but there are some more ways to reduce anxiety that take much more work. “Becoming an expert at feeling your feelings can be helpful: improving your emotional intelligence skills such as identifying your feelings ; what thoughts and body sensations you get with each feeling and then learning skills and strategies to react (say and do) in helpful ways.” Although these strategies can be more difficult than “deep breathing” they may work much better and work to avoid anxiety in the first place rather than coping with it when it does happen.
Anxiety is a widespread issue that is not limited to people that are diagnosed with anxiety. Anybody can be anxious, it's part of being human and it's nothing to be ashamed of. These strategies can greatly reduce anxiety for people that are diagnosed with it and people that are not. Everyone is anxious about being watched and judged by people, no matter who they are, so being able to control that anxiety can help people more than they realize.