Quick Intro

Hi! My name is Shweta Awasthi and I attend Cambridge High School in Milton, GA. I am in my senior year preparing my steps to head off to college. I am in Girl Scouts and have been for 9 years. As an Ambassador, you can complete a Gold Award. It’s a very recognizable honor. When hearing about this I knew exactly what topic I wanted to base my project on. I went through a lot of difficulties when dealing with my severe anxiety and didn’t want others to also go through that, so I decided on doing a project on Teens & Anxiety. I called it Bridge Over the Anxiety. Also, I am interested in Psychology and exploring specifically anxiety. I wanted to understand severe anxiety and the various disorders as well as the differentiation from stress.

 

The reason I created this website as the project for my Gold Award was because I felt as though there wasn’t a specific outlet or platform directed towards particularly teenagers that will actually help cope with high levels of anxiety for long periods of time. Furthermore, I selected this issue because I wanted to provide effective and healthy ways for teenagers especially those in high school suffering from high levels of anxiety to cope with it. I want to give them a place, which will be my website, to seek tips and ways to better manage their anxiety when they feel as if nothing is working, or their anxiety will never be dealt with.

 

As I said, I do have a personal reason for selecting this issue because I am a person who had really bad anxiety, and first semester of my junior year, I wasn’t able to really manage it well. I didn’t have a place online or anywhere that I felt I could turn to for some beneficial advice and healthy coping mechanisms. There was just generic stuff such as “just breathe” or “go outside and get some fresh air” and “take your mind off of it” even saying “take it one day at a time”. I believe that if people my age went to a comfortable site where someone who has gone through what they have gone through, who have had panic attacks, it will help them manage their anxiety. I know it would for me.

 

My project advisor, Dr. Vinson, helped provide very positive ways to reduce the anxiety I had with school at the time. I want teenagers who also are juniors or just in high school that have anxiety to visit my website and find healthy coping methods for themselves to ease those high levels of stress that they have. Also, for a lot of people, personal therapy where you discuss such matters as finding ways to deal with anxiety can be expensive, so you guys can always visit my website. It is free and accessible to anyone who needs it.

 

The real root cause of my issue is that high schoolers are not properly taught healthy and actually effective ways to handle high levels of anxiety. We are taught the basics of “put it aside and focus on the positive” or “you cannot control everything, so don’t stress”. These are not effective for those who are already under a lot of anxiety affecting a lot of aspects of their life. Also, we are given the notion that everyone has stress and people confuse this with anxiety. It is true that everyone may experience stress and that it is normal, but there is a big difference between having stress and having high levels of anxiety. An unhealthy amount of anxiety can lead a person to have many health issues. Saying everyone has anxiety is a big root cause of my issue because it dismisses those who have anxiety. Hope you all who visit my website find it helpful that I included a section providing more information on the difference between stress and anxiety.

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Now...there are things that I love. I love listening to music, riding my bike, watching funny content, and mindlessly scrolling through TikTok. I find comfort in these things. There are things that I don’t really love. I don’t really love when I am unable to deal and cope with my high levels of anxiety. Now, it is totally normal to feel anxious from time to time. Say for example you are anxious on presenting a speech in front of an audience, the feeling you get.. palms sweaty…heart beating faster…difficulty in breathing…. and then once you are giving the speech these various things go away and your physiological state goes back to normal or maybe for you it is after you deliver the speech. All of this is normal.

 

For me, I experienced all these symptoms on a somewhat daily basis. I never really got a break from being anxious, it was eating me up and lingering which then interfered with other aspects of my life. I was not able to deal with this anxiety I was feeling. I didn’t know who to go or even open up about this. I felt that I needed to suck it up because I was under the notion that everyone experiences anxiety. Living with no outlet to cope with what I was enduring left me very crippling. I would have constant stomach aches, headaches, and feeling unwell due to exhaustion. It got to the point where I was throwing up acid in the morning because of how anxious I was. My anxiety mainly stemmed from academics and once I got to a breaking point where the throwing up was occurring in the morning for almost every day in a week, I knew I needed some help to cope with it.

 

I did therapy with Mrs. Barfield, a certified psychologist, who guided me through everything I was experiencing. We talked through tips and strategies that’ll lessen the anxiety that I face on a daily basis, so I don’t have to physically feel it taking over my life. After these therapy sessions I got better, but by no means turned into a perfect human being with zero anxiety. I know that people tell you to take a deep breath and it will get better when you are anxious, but from personal experience this doesn’t help and I will not be telling you guys these same things. Anxiety takes time to deal with and even overcome. You have to certainly be committed to working to understand where your anxiety comes from and how to deal with it in a way that will prevent it from trickling into other parts of your life.

 

Again, I have by no means overcome my anxiety. But with guidance and help, I am able to better deal with it on a daily basis so it doesn’t interfere with other things that I do or what I want to achieve in the future. I would say that I am in a better place now with how I face the anxiety that I have and you can too get there. It won’t be an easy or short journey, but it is worth it. You may need to take the steps yourself in recognizing and understanding that you do struggle with anxiety in order to reach out for the help needed. I failed to do that first step, but once I really said ‘enough is enough’ and took the steps to understand my anxiety with the tips and guidance provided to me it got a whole lot better. I will be giving you what I used to deal with my anxiety.

 

With this website, I hope to give you tips, guidance, and information from two psychologists to help you lessen/cope with the anxiety you face, so you can live a more fulfilling life. I’ll also be providing information on the topic of panic and anxiety attacks. I know how dreadful life can be when you are unable to control your anxiety and when it gets out of hand the physiological along with the mental strain it has on you, so please take your time to look at the resources provided.

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