00:00Hey guys, I'm Serena and I suffer from separation anxiety.
00:03Hi, my name is Anna and I have general anxiety.
00:05Hi, my name is Mickey and I have social anxiety.
00:07I first noticed that I had anxiety when I was in ninth grade
00:10and I had a panic attack, which I've never had before.
00:13And it was because my dad was leaving on a trip, a business trip,
00:16for a long time out of the country.
00:19And this triggered in me this sense of abandonment.
00:22My parents got divorced when I was one years old.
00:25I don't know if there was something about going from home to home growing up.
00:30There's something there.
00:31It wasn't really until high school that I figured.
00:34I was like, oh, I'm an anxious person.
00:37And then I kind of went from there.
00:39I didn't know that social anxiety was a thing until I was in college.
00:43And once I learned more about what that was, it just made so much sense to me.
00:47I love art.
00:48I think it's such a fun way to express yourself.
00:51I've always been really into graphic design and graphic art.
00:54I think for me, expressing myself through art and through making and writing
00:59is a way that I can heal.
01:02So I remember I got my heart broken by a junior when I was a freshman in high school.
01:06And as a way to channel all that I was feeling, I made a movie about it.
01:11And it won Best Film at my high school's film festival.
01:14That anxiety and all those feelings and my emotions through art
01:17was a really great way to express myself.
01:19I drew Broken Home with a blue and a pink side to represent my mom and dad.
01:23I know that's a little gender bias, but just roll with it.
01:27You know, I wasn't working with every color in the rainbow.
01:30There's nowhere to escape.
01:31That's why the whole sky is covered in clouds.
01:33And then underneath, I'm kind of holding both sides of the house.
01:36And it's just me because I'm an only child.
01:39And I got blonde hair.
01:40It felt really therapeutic, honestly.
01:41For me, I started with hot pink because, one, I love pink.
01:46And two, I just think I'm a generally pretty colorful person.
01:50And then I added a lot more darker streaks in there because anxiety creeps up.
01:54There's also some eyes in my painting because I constantly have this feeling of just being observed and being watched.
02:00Just kind of an over-your-shoulder, like, watching feeling that makes me really uncomfortable.
02:04I think that anxiety is very normal.
02:06I think a lot of people have anxiety and might not even realize it.
02:09And it's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.
02:11If you have any anxiety period, you should consider seeing someone, talking to someone, a medical professional.
02:16I do think that everyone's anxiety is different.
02:19And what works for me might not work for you.
02:22And what works for you might not work for everyone else.
02:24It's important to explore your resources and seeing what's out there because there is a lot of help.
02:30And you don't have to go through something alone.
02:32It's important to make sure that you're caring for your mental health and not just your physical health.
02:36Talking to someone about it made me feel like I wasn't crazy.
02:41It was just that I have anxiety.
02:43There's just something in my chemicals that makes me feel this way.
02:46Use your anxiety as fuel because if you're an anxious person, your anxiety is never going to go away.
02:51It's always going to be there.
02:53And you can be better and you can be happy and you'll still have anxiety.
02:57A lot of times with anxiety, our first reaction is to try and just shove it away and pretend that
03:02it's not happening.
03:03And that can actually make it worse.
03:05So just being honest with yourself and acknowledging that it's something that you have to work through day to day
03:10is really important.
03:11You.
03:11You.
03:11You.
03:11You.
