I have suffered from anxiety my entire life, my earliest memories are related to anxiety and OCD. I’m 16 now and feel like I’ve thrown my entire life away just because of anxiety, but everybody else just thinks I'm lazy. 

I dropped out of college before I even started going because of anxiety. I wanted to go so badly, it was a course I loved, but unfortunately, my anxiety did not love it so much. Because of this, my family judged me, called me ungrateful, and would taunt me about my future and how I'll never be happy or get anywhere in my life. I regret my decision so much because now I am getting that same feeling about working and am starting to believe what my family/ parents told me.

I had a really bad panic attack a few months ago - my parents said they were sick of putting up with my behaviour, I'm an embarrassment, and that I need to suck it up because they have dealt with it for too long now. I feel like I can't explain how anxiety feels to me, it's just this barrier that only I seem to have and then other people (without this barrier) get angry at me for not just going around it or climbing over it. They think I'm just overreacting and lazy and it really hurts because I really try every day to push my own boundaries and challenge my anxiety but most days it just feels impossible. Some of the things my parents have said to me about my mental health/ anxiety will probably stay with me forever.

I just wish people were more educated. Sometimes when I open up to somebody about my mental health issues I feel so humiliated and it really frustrates me because nobody should have to feel ashamed of themselves or so let down by their family that they have to vent on reddit to random strangers on the internet.