When the “Real World” Hit, So Did My Anxiety

How a quarter-life-crisis kickstarted my mental health journey

By Kristina Benoist

I grew up in a family where mental health has always been a part of the conversation. It was perfectly ok to go to therapy or to have conversations about your thoughts or emotions. Whenever I, or one of my sisters, seemed overwhelmed or stressed, my mom would keep us home from school and declare a Mental Health Day. It was my mom’s way of making us slow down and clear our minds of everything weighing us down. For a long time, though, mental illness really wasn’t on my radar.

And then my anxiety kicked in…

I had just graduated from college, and I was aching to travel the world, save the planet, and leave a mark of positive change in whatever way I could. Within a few months, though, the weight of the “real” world hit me. I had lost the safe-haven that school had always provided for me, I was working a job that I hated, I felt like all of my actions had lost any intention or meaning, and I was overwhelmed with all of the negativity in the world. I’d fully entered adulthood, and I felt completely stuck and hopeless in my life.

I can remember my first anxiety attack so vividly.

After a weekend trip, I hopped on a 2-hour plane ride back home, and it gave me some time to soak in everything I was feeling. All of my pent-up thoughts and emotions started to boil over. I spent the duration of the flight in the tiny airplane bathroom fighting to breathe, being sick to my stomach, and crying uncontrollably. I thought what I was feeling was just a fluke, and nothing more.

It wasn’t a fluke. Over the next six months, anxiety started to become a more frequent part of my everyday life. It got to the point where even leaving my apartment seemed like the biggest struggle. I’d go to sleep every night just hoping that when I would wake up, my life would go back to normal: I could go to work, spend time with friends, go out to eat, travel, even just get into an Uber without feeling like my heart was beating out of my chest or that I was going to be sick to my stomach.

Even with the open environment that I grew up in, I had a really hard time telling anyone what was going on with me.

To be honest, I felt kind of stupid for everything I was feeling. I knew that my anxiety didn’t stem from any rational fear, and I was actually angry with myself for letting it be so real. I felt extremely selfish, too. I was physically healthy and had a comfortable life with, admittedly, quite a bit of privilege. I was luckier than a lot of people in the world and it felt ridiculous that I couldn’t appreciate it.

To many of the people I interacted with, I’m sure it seemed like nothing was wrong. I constantly had a smile on my face until I would have the opportunity to run to the bathroom and give myself a pep talk—just to make it through another hour of the day. For the people closest to me, I was dodging calls, ignoring text messages, and making up every excuse as to why I couldn’t leave my apartment.

I realized after nearly a year that my anxiety wasn’t just going to vanish. I couldn’t let it stop my life any more than it already had. I had to put in some serious effort towards feeling better. It started small with me just watching Michelle Obama’s speeches every morning before I started my day. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but those speeches were just about the only thing that got me through the day, at first. I tested out essential oils, then I found some breathing techniques, and finally, I told the people around me that all of my excuses really just boiled down to anxiety—plain and simple. Slowly, all of those horrible symptoms started to lessen.

I felt for a long time that I knew where my anxiety stemmed from, so why did I need to work through it with a therapist? Therapy was expensive and unnecessary in my mind. But after nearly a year of my mom saying I should see a therapist, and me vehemently telling her I didn’t need one, I found a therapist—who worked with my financial constraints, I might add—that has completely changed my perspective on everything mental health-related.

Once I started going to therapy regularly, I found that having an hour to get everything off my chest was just what I needed.

I was able to work through things that I didn’t realize were even impacting me. I started having more productive conversations with the people that I had shut myself off from. I started recognizing and combating the symptoms of anxiety before it could even take over. I also started realizing that taking time to work on my anxiety didn’t mean I was selfish. Mental health is a part of everyone’s life, and working to better it doesn’t make you ungrateful for the other aspects of your life.

I try to be proactive about my mental health now. I get outside more, workout regularly, try to eat a healthy diet and meditate a few times a week. I’m much more open with my loved ones about what makes me feel anxious, too. There are some things that, without fail, continue to cause me anxiety. And that’s ok. But now I can recognize it for what it is, and handle it as best as I can.

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that every single day provides the opportunity to try again.

Sometimes, my anxiety is crippling, to put it bluntly, and I feel the same way that I did in that airplane bathroom. Other days, I’m on the top of the world and not even anxiety can stop me. Even when there seems to be absolutely zero hope of feeling better, there’s going to be a day when things improve. Maybe it won’t be instantaneous, and maybe it will take some hard work. But things will get better.