I can’t remember a time when anxiety wasn’t there. It feels like it grew up with me — always in the background, always humming under the surface. As a kid, I didn’t have a name for it. I knew something inside me was unsettled, but I didn’t know how to explain it to anyone.
My first panic attack hit when I was about eleven. One minute I was walking home from the beach in the middle of summer, and the next I was sweating, weak, and floating outside my own body. It passed, like these things do, but it came back again and again. Because I didn’t understand it, I kept it to myself. I toughed it out. I let it tear me up quietly.
I was a quiet kid anyway — always watching, rarely participating. People probably thought I was independent, but the truth is I was scared. Silence felt safer than being ridiculed or dismissed. So I stayed quiet, and without realizing it, anxiety stopped being something I felt and slowly became who I was.
Avoidance became my way of surviving. I avoided connection, questions, and being seen. I convinced myself I could handle everything alone, even though being trapped in my own head was the last place a kid should be living.
The cost was high. I missed out on friendships, opportunities, and any real relationship with myself. I thought trusting no one was safer, but it only isolated me further.
It wasn’t until adulthood — and sobriety — that I finally understood what had happened. Anxiety wasn’t my identity. It was a survival strategy I built because I didn’t know any better. Letting go of it without alcohol was harder than I ever expected, because the familiar always feels easier than the unknown.
But eventually, you have to meet yourself. Not the version shaped by fear, but the person underneath all the protection.
If I could speak to that younger version of me, I’d tell him this:
Trust someone. And stop being afraid of yourself. You’re not something to fear — you’re something to love.