18 Struggles Only Anxious People Have To Deal With

1. Being afraid of very random, very ordinary things, such as driving in cars or taking tests or meeting your boss for lunch. Everyday life is like a minefield when you’re not sure what will set you off.

2. Being given advice such as “be grateful” from people who have clearly never been in the throes of a complete irrational panic attack.

3. Not being able to handle voicemails, texts that say “can we talk,” or people gasping or saying “OH MY GOD” without immediately telling you what they’re reacting to.

4. Not only making yourself feel worse by over-thinking, but ruining projects and pieces and friendships by doing it too.

5. Assuming that missed calls are hints that someone absolutely hates you.

6. Convincing yourself that any and every subtweet, even from the mildest of acquaintances, is somehow about you.

7. Panicking when the doorbell unexpectedly rings at night, you have a missed call from an unknown number, your tests results don’t come back immediately, or (for the ladies) you’re 6 hours late for your period and therefore pregnant.

8. Actually checking to make sure certain people haven’t defriended or unfollowed you.

9. And then absolutely panicking when you realize someone has.

10. Having to be the slightly paranoid girlfriend/boyfriend because there’s no conceivable way that “hey” meant nothing.

11. Bursting into tears every time one of your parents or grandparents gets even the slightest bit ill because clearly this is the end.

12. Not being able to fall asleep because you’re worried that you’re somehow going to go broke or die and it will hurt or be robbed or…

13. You often have to talk yourself out of being convinced that people are sitting around talking about you/judging you for really mundane things like, your profile picture.

14. Which, speaking of, you cannot ever decide on, and so you end up deleting and changing regularly, along with trying 10 filters before you post an Instagram, taking 1,000 selfies before you get stuck between two you like, and sending them to your best friend to decide, because you’re too worried about the imperfections you see in both, and so someone else has to decide which is worse.

15. You also delete Tweets and status updates if they don’t get a certain number of likes or favorites within like, five minutes.

16. You constantly check your phone because you’re convinced you’re missing something horrible, like an email from your boss or message from someone giving you the heads up that everybody is talking about you and hates you.

17. Every single one of these made sense to you.

18. You’re now even more worried and paranoid than you were before.