Dear Anita

I have been seeing the counselors at Stockton and there are psychiatrists on campus who may provide medications for anxiety. There is also a nutritionist who helps students plan healthy meals so that they have balanced energy levels throughout the day. Organic Chemistry lecture class is okay, it’s the labs that take time and since my anxiety makes me shake and makes it hard to focus sometimes I will have to miss lab classes. The anxiety has caused my heart to race, shortness of breath, feeling brain haze and sometimes zoning out, feeling extremely self-conscious, feeling warm all of a sudden and after a while feeling cold because I expended lots of energy. I also feel shaky when walking, will cry easily, feel like I don’t want to get out of bed sometimes or that it would be better to just fall asleep and not wake up, have a stomach that tends to churn and rumble because of the anxiety (sometimes after eating I feel uncomfortably full even though I only ate a little or I just don’t feel hungry at times and then after a long time my body feels really hungry because I haven’t eaten and after I eat I feel bloated and stomach pain). Also I have been breaking out in more acne because of the anxiety. Recently I just healed from an ear infection because of anxiety. I just feel like I’m losing myself and don’t know how to live anymore because I just feel exhausted and wish I could just fade away and let go of the pain because it’s taking over my life. My parents will yell at me saying that it’s just me thinking this way and if I could change my thoughts I would be okay and they think that I have nothing to be anxious about. I just feel like I’m afraid of myself currently and starting to feel detached and lately I’ve been having trouble falling asleep and tossing and turning. I’m still slightly afraid of the dark, because my mind sees patterns of shadows and ghosts but I know that they aren’t real and it’s just my mind being more alert because it is dark outside. I think there’s a term called hypnagogic hallucinations where a person will see shadows or ghosts in the darkness or before they wake because their minds tend to try to make patterns to try to understand how they are feeling or what they think they will see and in the dark or moments before waking up the brain is not fully aware so there is a peripheral sense that causes people to be aware of certain patterns and shapes and then when they fully wake they know that what they saw isn’t real because it fades away. It is often due to stress that causes people to have hypnagogic hallucinations because stress can strain the mind but people after being initially startled become aware and they know it isn’t real. It is a common part of sleep paralysis and often it is caused by lots of mental stress because the body is stressed and wants to sleep but the mind is still anxious so you have an in-between state where you are semi-aware and that is where the person starts experiencing things. Hope this makes sense. Thank you for being here and listening. Hoping to hear from you.