What it’s really like living with severe anxiety in college

For Kaitlin Fletcher, 21, every day is a struggle. What are normal day-to-day activities for us, takes a tremendous amount of effort for her. Kaitlin suffers from severe anxiety and depression, and after completing her undergraduate degree in pre-veterinary medicine, she is on her way to graduate school.

For all college students, anxiety is just one of the facts of life that plague us throughout the semester, but especially during events like midterms or the dwindling hours before and during finals week. Kaitlin, on the other hand, feels that crippling weight of stress multiplied by ten.

Although this struggle is all too familiar for her, there is a certain stigma surrounding those with severe anxiety. Either people just don’t understand or they just say things like, “oh, you’re just being over-dramatic.”

In an attempt to fight the stigma and bring some truth to the subject, Kaitlin bore all and exposed the truth surrounding the life with severe anxiety as a college student.

You will notice that all the pictures included in this article feature Kaitlin smiling and appearing to be happy. In response to me asking if she had any pictures related to living with severe anxiety, Kaitlin responded with, “When you frown and look sad, people will ask you questions and sometimes you just don’t have a good answer. So I always smile.”

What’s a normal day like as a student with severe anxiety?

For a student with anxiety, every day is different. Some days are good and I can get up and go to class in the morning no problem. Other days it feels like I am physically being held in my bed by an invisible weight. And in my head I will tell myself I need to get out of bed, I need to get ready… But sometimes I can’t. And on moderate days that means I’m running a little behind. And on bad days that means  I can’t go to my first class and I’ll email my teacher and tell them I’m throwing up because I can’t tell them that my anxiety and depression are keeping me from fully functioning that day.

As a girl who likes makeup, my makeup and clothing are my armor for the day. And my armor is very important to keeping my confidence up and the negative thoughts out of my head.

Going through the day is exhausting with anxiety. Not only am I thinking about the items that are going on at that time, I’m thinking about five things at a minimum that have happened in the past, that I need to do, and things that could happen.

During the middle of the day, I often need to go back to my room and relax for a moment. That means shutting my door, putting my ear plugs in, and shutting my eyes trying to clear my mind. If I can’t meditate to quiet my thoughts, I turn on Netflix to focus on something other than my own life. When this ends I make sure my makeup is good, and I might change my clothes if I’m not feeling good about my looks.

School and studying are really tricky for me. A lot of the time I can’t bring myself to do it. And it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I’m frustrated that I don’t know all the answers and I get even more upset when I can’t find them.

Meals have to be the toughest part of the day because most of the time I have to go alone because of my crazy schedule being a Biology major and being very involved.

How are normal activities/actions different for you compared to others?

I’m a high function person with anxiety. I won’t let my anxiety hold me back from being involved, but what’s different is in my brain. I will research every aspect of what I am going to do before I do it. I need to know the times and locations and who’s going to be there before I will commit to going. I will double triple check this even on the way to the event. I will have planned how long it will take me to get there so I can arrive about two to three minutes early unless there is limited seating then I will be there 15-20 minutes early. I also won’t show up at someone’s house or dorm room without a full invite.

How do people react when you say that you have severe anxiety?

A lot people tell me they don’t believe me when I say I have anxiety if they don’t know me personally already. They will say things like you’re so involved or so confident how can you have anxiety. That makes my anxiety spike because explaining what anxiety is, is really hard. When I tell them about it they say,  “Well I have, too. That’s just being lazy. That’s something you just have to get over.” There’s nothing I can say that will make them understand that my level of anxiety is not the same as you worrying about your test grade or what your parents are going to think.

How is the stigma against people with anxiety wrong?

The stigma against people with anxiety is that we’re just lazy people trying to get out of our work. And that’s not true at all. We are working with our full potential at all times. Sometimes our full potential is very low and that’s not something that we can help. It’s something we have to work through and we are going to do everything that we can to make up for our bad days.

Are there any stereotypes that people should be aware of?

I’m not sure that there are stereotypes for people with anxiety because it’s an invisible disorder for the most part. I think what people need to realize is that different levels of anxiety disorders affect people differently and therefore can be affecting someone and you don’t even know it. So don’t put your perceived thoughts onto another person’s actions without understanding them, and it’s also not appropriate to ask people about their anxiety or what their levels are unless you have their permission for that type of intimacy.

What’s it like to be finishing college and preparing to enter grad school or a career while having severe anxiety?

It’s a shit storm. When you apply to undergraduate schools you know you’ll get accepted somewhere. Applying to graduate school you could easily be declined everywhere you go and it’s not that rare for it to happen. So I have about three back-up plans that I can possibly work through if I don’t get accepted into veterinary school. I’m a mess at every moment of the day because I need to apply and write supplement materials, but I have to keep going and rely on the fact that I am a competitive candidate.

I think it’s important for people like me, to speak out about what goes on in their own mind so that others can understand what people who can’t speak out are going through.