Hello!
I’m a student in my final year at Polytechnic. I’m interning right now and also preparing for uni application. I think I have anxiety problems. I used to feel anxiety often since 5 years ago when Covid started. It was just on and off time to time, but it all started to fall apart again early this year. I became physically ill while leading my school team for a project that I didn’t feel confident in. For that project, I felt physical pain/ tightness in my chest every time I think about it. When I felt that, I just stopped everything about the project and escape every uncomfortable things by watching movies. I tried to lead as much as I can but I became ill one of the days and I even cried on the public train due to stress. I can say that I have never ever taken MC in 3 years of Poly, and that’s how much I dedicated to my school work and tried to stay healthy as much as I can. But this time, it was just too much. That led me to procrastination even more and strain in my relationship with group mate when they thought I was not contributing enough. I tried to explain my anxiety and my physical illness at that time but they just thought of it as an excuse. I fought with one of my group mate and our friendship fell apart ever since. But it didn’t end there. When a new semester started, I became worse. The tightness would not leave my chest, I started procrastinating because I just wanted to escape that feeling. I made mistakes during the project and I couldn’t stop blaming myself that I marked myself low mark in self evaluation which led me to get a slightly lower grade than my group mates. Some of my groupmates understood me and felt that I worked hard for that despite my anxiety, but I could not forgive myself for that. I couldn’t sleep for days after the final presentation and kept blaming myself for everything that went wrong. And then internship hunt began, even then I was so not confident with myself that I still felt tightness in my chest all the time. This time, I managed it better and landed a good internship at a good company. Even after that, I still get anxious for little things and blame myself for tiny mistakes I made in my work. I get irritated easily due to stress from home as well. And then even before intern ends, I had to start applying for uni which caused stress and anxiety even more. Now I have been feeling that tightness in chest for like 2 weeks now and have bedtime procrastination for like a month and I am not getting enough sleep at all. Overall, I just feel miserable all the time except the time I’m escaping from reality by watching shows or scrolling social media and I don’t wanna feel that way anymore.
My point is that I can’t really rest and do my work peacefully due to that chest pain caused by anxiety. And the escapism I do every time I feel stressed is stopping me from being productive and living my life. These days, I don’t even text anyone. I also developed social anxiety especially in networking settings. The worst of all is that I’m still blaming myself for every little things. TBH I’m one of the top students in my course, but I always felt like a failure. I always look down on myself and think things so pessimistically. I just don’t wanna feel that tightness in my chest anymore. I just don’t wanna blame myself or hate myself anymore for little things. I just want to live my life peacefully and just communicate better with my friends and sleep well as well.
Can help give me advice on this one please? Thank you so much.
