I don’t know what to do

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So I’m in my final year of highschool before going to university and I haven’t been able to cope with exam stress or application stress well. Everytime I make an application I honestly need hours after just to calm my chest down since it starts feeling heavy again. I have tried to regain safety and have a routine that works keeping me calmer but honestly this throws off all that progress.

I don’t want to take pressure anymore like I genuinely feel like I want to stop trying and I don’t want to be achieving anything. I want an average university with lowkey academic pressure and peace. I found one far away from home which fits my needs but my parents won’t let me go that far. In fact they think I’m running away and taking the easier way out when I should be facing it since the world is a difficult place. While I agree I really need to be happy to commit. If I’m not I will deteriorate my mental health further and it’s already really bad. I don’t know how to manage it. It creeps up before exams genuinely in a way I can’t prepare properly. It remains in my chest and will not go away no matter how hard I try. It keeps coming back. It will show up in tinier things like my friend not responding to my messages or future issues I really don’t have to deal with at the moment. I barely made one application and deadlines are coming up I need to focus which I’m not able to do. It’s getting scarier and I cry everyday feeling like there’s no way I can get out of this when I can but at the moment it feels so impending I really want to get away. It feels like the end every-time as if it’s this or nothing and I’m sick of venting to everyone with no way of receiving actual help. No one knows how to help. My parents try but they think I’m weak for even feeling this and I should just get over it.

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Hey @user291340 ,

Reading your post, you described it starting in your chest, the heaviness that comes back whenever applications or exams come up, and how it takes hours just to settle again. That physical part matters. When the body keeps reacting like this, focusing or pushing through isn’t just hard, it’s unrealistic.

It also sounds like you’re trying to meet a lot of expectations at the same time. School, deadlines, parents’ worries about the future, and your own need to stay okay mentally. Wanting a lower-pressure environment reads more like you’re saying you can commit, but only if you’re not falling apart while doing it, which I completely support what you said.

From what you wrote, the fear feels paralysing. Almost like there’s no room to fail “this or nothing.” And when you try to explain how bad it’s getting, it feels like it doesn’t quite land, or people don’t know what to do with it. That can leave you feeling stuck and alone with it, even when others are around.

For now, it may help to think less about forcing yourself to face everything, and more about what support might steady your body first. That could mean a medical or mental health check-in to talk about the chest tightness and panic symptoms, not just the stress itself. It could also mean slowing decisions so they’re not being made while you’re already overwhelmed, or having help to hold the conversation with your parents so it isn’t all on you.

If you’re open to one small check-in with yourself: when you imagine getting the right kind of help, what feels like it would ease first, even slightly? The chest, the constant crying, the sense that everything is closing in?

Nothing here suggests you’re weak, it suggests you’ve been carrying more than your system can handle on its own.