Finding Hope Through Fear

Anxiety causes fear within people. It is scary to feel. It can feel restrictive. It can affect someone’s entire life. It can affect thoughts, feelings, emotions. There is more than meets the eye.

Anxiety negatively impacts my life every day. It affects how I see the world, how I think or feel. For me, I feel it in my heart. That’s how it starts. It erratically beats and I feel sick. It can make me feel disconnected from everyone. It causes me a lot of fear and worry. It can affect how I approach things. I’ve dealt with it since a very young age, especially when my parents separated. I’ve also experienced panic attacks where my hands get shaky and I start randomly crying and feel discomfort in whatever setting I’m in. A lyric from Shinee’s song Ayo I can relate to is, “When you still can’t sleep because of the many many thoughts”. Anxiety can cause me to overthink and worry about things.

My first panic attack was in Walmart. I don’t like Walmart because I feel like there are always a lot of people. One day I went there and I felt like I was walking on clouds. My heart was beating very rapidly, my hands started shaking and I couldn’t focus. I felt like throwing up and on the verge of crying. I was really scared after that attack because at the time I didn’t know how to cope with it. I get very few nowadays and it’s not so severe, mostly when I’m in crowds. I try my best to remain calm and to get through it. In the words of Lee Hi in her song Breathe, “Take a deep breath.”

Ways that help me cope with my anxiety is listening to music. I see it as a safe space. Especially the genre k-pop. K-pop music has a lot of choreography, visual and creative aspects to it. It has changed my life so much and has helped me embrace who I am and to erase some of my fear.  Even though the songs have a lot of Korean in them, the translations always have an interesting story to tell. Also the k-pop community is very supportive and full of love. It is a huger community than people might think and has helped people with their mental health and created a comfortable community for fans. They also worked very hard to debut and some come from poor backgrounds. K-pop artists are so kind to their fans and they can be relatable in some aspects.My dog Maya is also another coping mechanism. She has been with me since I was a little girl. She has been there through thick and thin, good days and bad. She always snuggles with me and licks me. We are like best friends and she helps me ease my anxiety.

Overall, I’m still exploring my anxiety and learning new strategies to cope with it. I’m hoping this piece will help others and create more inclusion. I want this piece to be a reminder to people that we all have our own struggles and it’s okay. As long as you learn how to deal with it, you are capable of doing anything in this world. I hope what people take away from this is that it’s okay to be yourself!

Featured Image: “Heart Burst” by Will Clayton is licensed under CC BY 2.0.