Narrative Essay On Anxiety And Anxiety

For me, I get really bad anxiety about speeches. While I wait to go up, my heart begins to pound and it’s hard for me to breathe. I try and give myself encouragement and pray for strength and for the words to flow easily out of me. Before I’m even up there, I start shaking, though. My legs and my hands are the worst. Along with the shaking, my palms get sweaty. I wait there trying to tell myself I’m fine until I am told to go up and do my speech. That’s when I panic. When I start out, I think I’m fine. I begin like everyone else, but then I look down at my notes as my speech is continuing. I can see my hands shaking. They always shake, but they shake terribly when I’m up in front of people. That’s the moment where any sort of calmness in me is gone. I have a fear of public speaking, so this is where that fear comes out. What usually happens is my voice begins to shake. I rush sentences because I can’t breathe. My breathing is ridged and shallow. I can’t seem to get enough air into my lungs. This then lasts throughout the entire speech. I’m in this
state where I forget everything. My breathing is uneven and so difficult. My voice trembles and all I want is to retreat back to the comfort and safety of my seat. One specific instance I remember is that last year in Mrs.
Hansen’s history class we all had to read passages out loud. I would always freak out. I would look in on the syllabus and see what those days were, so I could try and mentally prepare myself, but that never seemed to help much. I remember on one of those days, she had me read a long passage out loud. I was doing good at first, but then I could hear my voice shaking, so then I shut down like I usually do. I couldn’t breathe, so I couldn’t read the sentences. I took a lot of long breaks to pause after sentences, but I had so many left. I was afraid that she would ask me why I stopped, so I gathered up the courage and asked, “Can someone else read please?” I was so embarrassed and just didn’t want to cry. My eyes were watering and my throat felt lumped up. She let someone else read, thank goodness, but I remember always getting bad anxiety before reading
aloud. It’s stuck with me. I remember all these occasions and it freaks me out. I think the beginning of my bad anxiety started up in fifth grade. The Christmas Program. I was chosen to be Mary. Gosh, I had so many lines. So many lines. I remember my face getting beat red. Afterwards, I remember a friend asking me why my face was so red. This never happened to me before. I never was this nervous before. Later that week, I was diagnosed with Shingles, which is adult chicken pox. They said that I probably got them because of a situation where I was really nervous, that Christmas play. I guess that’s what scarred me about doing speeches. It just stuck with me. It’s gotten worse over the years. My anxiety continues to grow. All the speeches over all my years in school. It’s gotten worse and worse. I remember one good one though, but that was because it was with a friend and I used a technique where I read one or two sentences then she would read one or two, so I could take it slow. One at a time. One sentence, then breathe. Then she went and then I did again. That, again, was in Mrs. Hansen’s class. That’s the only speech I felt I did well on, and it’s only because I did that. Hopefully, though, I will conquer my fear one day.