Anxiety and Growing Up

[Delorian]

This thread may sound repetitive, but it's more or less a reflection for myself and may shed some light on the situation of others.

I'm fairly new to this pain in the 0104 called anxiety. I've had anxiety in the past for various things. Everyone feels anxious once in a while, and everyone has their own little fears that may cause their stomachs to churn or their minds to feel faint.
Over the past week my anxieties have stemmed from the belief that something was wrong with my health, however I think there's a lot more to it than that.

When I joined this site, I found it somewhat astonishing that the majority of anxiety sufferers are in their late teens and twenties. So, let's talk about anxiety and growing up.

What we all have in common at our age is expectations. This isn't to say that other age groups don't have to deal with expectations, but I believe our age group (I'm 24) suffers the most. Lets analyze the vicious triangle that I believe leads to anxiety for people in our age group: School, Work, Relationships. The three are related.

There is no question that school often places an insurmountable pressure on us. The transition to College and University can be hell. What do I study? How do I know what I want to do for the rest of my life? These are questions that ultimately have us worrying about our future, which is only normal. You wouldn't be human if you didn't worry. Aside from that, most of us work while we educate. What ends up happening is a monster of a vicious circle. We strive to do well in school, but are often hindered by our jobs. We don't have enough time to study, but we HAVE to go to work to pay off the bills. We stay up late at night trying to catch up. Our sleep schedule becomes a mess. We sleep limited hours. Then we have to deal with the expectations of our friends, making time for them which only takes away time from school and work. Point is, dealing with the 3, there is always one that is going to suffer the most.

My story is similar. Going into university I got rejected from the program I wanted to go into 3 times. I got out of university with a bachelors in English Literature, and what I've always wanted to do was scriptwrite. I currently work a part time job that I had the opportunity with to go full time, but declined in order to concentrate on my writing. This is because I know it's a tough business to crack. What ended up happening was, I think, a bit of a burn out. Writing was all I ever thought about. I become ridiculously worried that if I didn't start writing soon and fast that I would ultimately be stuck with the job I have now for the rest of my life. I thought about my future and how I would eventually like to get married and have kids, and how all those responsibilities would never give me the time I needed to write. I would spend days at home, in my room, just concentrating on my writing, as if it were the most important thing in my life, and I would often have days where I would get nothing written because I was just over thinking it. I felt like I needed to meet expectations. I felt that at my age I SHOULD be working full time and I wasn't. While I reasoned with myself that I was doing the right thing in trying to make a career for myself, I felt guilty for every day that I didn't spend towards writing, which made me stress even more. I would stay up late, because it was often the only time my ideas ran smoothly....sometimes up until 5 in the morning just to sleep 1 hour and be at work for 7am. I would come home and nap for hours, only to wake up and repeat the process.

I think I'm rambling a little now, but the trend is obvious for people our age. Always feeling overworked and worrying about our future. What I keep trying to remind myself is that my anxieties are coming from an accumulation of stress, common stress at my age. I try to convince myself that it is a phase that will pass in time.

If anyone else feels somewhat of the same stresses, please share.

[jimmy2shoes]

I definitely do.
I'm 21, have lived out of home and paid for everything myself since I was 19, am doing an economics degree, have 4 siblings that I always try to remain close with, always try to keep my parents close and make sure everything is ok.
It's a massive struggle to balance everything sometimes. I have two jobs, one with my grandpa at a shop which is the most boring thing in the entire world, however he pays me cash and I have the freedom to work as I please (like if i need a week off, I can take it), and I work at a bar as well. Last friday I worked 17 and a half hours straight :p, 9am to 7pm at the shop, then 8pm-2:30am at the bar. I still owe some of my family money, because my car costs a f-cking fortune to run, registration, insurance etc. I like to keep the car so I have access to see my family (Im in australia, its it's uncommon for teenagers to move out when they go to university, most of us save the money stay at home and go to the uni within a decent radius). However as a teen my parents were always fighting, so I was happy to get out of there around 18/19.
Without the life story, I compltely agree your view on expectations. These expectations for me arn't necessarily the expectations of others, they are more the ones I put on myself. I enjoy having expectations of myself, they make me do the work I need to do, and ultimately, the harder I work, I figure the more rewards I will reap in the future. The reason I work so hard is so that I can pay for the luxuries I want - e.g living out of home, having a car to go surfing/see my family in, eating the food I want to eat. But I sometimes wonder whether the work that I am doing is rewarding me mentally - e.g the shop I work in, is the most boring work ever and I end up just thinking for 9 hours straight, tryign to kill time then going home. I wonder, if I had a better job, a job that is more fulfilling, one that isn't boring and it kept me busy, would I have less anxiety - because I have less time to think, and I would actually enjoy it. I enjoy the bar work.
But at the same time, if I didn't work at my grandpas shop, I can't just save money and go up the coast for a week or two, and take days off because I have too much uni work, and blah blah. Freedom is never free it seems. This is turn, would make me more unhappy.

It terms of other expectations, I always expect or TRY to be a good brother, try to help my mum and dad when they ask for help, and this is all ok. I have no anxiety around my family expectations. And university I don't really care about, i go to a really good uni in sydney so just PASSING uni is good enough to get a decent job (the content is so boring). FRIENDS are one thing that get me anxioius - i like to be liked by everyone, i want to be funny, yet a good guy, giving, being empathetical etc etc. I raise the bar quite high, and it does get my axniety going when these traits are not validated. However I don't know how to deal with this, because I am always happier when I get a certain level of attention (good attention, not bad), and while some may think I shouldn't care what people think - I've tried that, and while I stopped caring for a while, I wasn't happier.

Anxiety does stem from something other than how it presents itself. It can be expectations, over working yourself, or simply suppressing emotions that havn't been dealt with over a long period of time. And these emotions often come out in our young adult years, and then we figure it out, and move on. My mum had really bad depression and she said that from teen to about 25 were the hardest times she had, because she had so much to figure out (she had quite a challenging upbringing). Then, you simply learn to manage everything better, it is not so overwhelming, and things get better.
I think analysing our past and present is most important in recovering anxiety, and somewhat neglecting the future. Because the future is so uncertain, we can only work on what HAPPENED and whats going on NOW, and let the chips fall where they may. And given your anxiety is bad, the catastrophic conclusions you create, attempting to predic the future is only going to be more harmful to your wellbeing.

Thats my thoughts.