This submission comes from Rebecca, the creator of this wonderful piece of art that was published last week on the website. Her story details the intensity of anxiety and the panic that can accompany it. As with most Coping entries, it’s lengthy, but I promise you it’s worth the read.

Here’s Rebecca’s story.

How do you explain to your daughter in fourth grade that you can’t continue to pick her up  early from school day after day, even when she is sobbing on the phone in the nurse’s office? How do you come home to see that same girl two years later, white as a ghost, talking to herself in between hyperventilation gasps?

I couldn’t really tell you because I was that girl.

I don’t know where my anxiety stemmed from then, but I guess that is why I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It’s an odd experience to be twelve years old, having already seen three different therapists and now taking medicine every day because of something called “anxiety and depression”. It is also an odd experience to be in high school and to begin to realize that the same medicine that has been “fixing” you for four years is now not working as well and that the anxiety and depression can come back way worse than it had ever been. And now they have a new friend.

Suicidal thoughts.