 

Hello, I'm 16 and from the UK. Recently I have come to terms with the fact that for nearly all of my life I have not been feeling how I should. I think this is anxiety. I often have fears of interacting with others because I'm scared that I will do something wrong or that people will judge my actions. This is so extreme to the point that I have isolated myself from lots of people and have lost out on opportunities to bond with friends and family. Often when I leave the house with my family to go in public I fear that I look weird or people are going to stare at me. I also have an extremely hard time getting over people's comments and remarks; like about my voice, this has made me fear talking to people more. I also suffer from physical symptoms like sweating, trembling, avoiding eye contact, trouble falling asleep, panic attacks, shortness of breath, and stomach aches. I have acknowledged before that I have problems and I have tried to make more of an effort to control these feelings, I've read books about coping mechanisms and I have even tried to use elastic bands to get rid of unwanted thoughts. It just feels like everybody's eyes are glued to me. I really want to go to see a specialist but, I don't know how to approach this conversation with my parents and I really don't want them to feel like they caused any of my problems. I also fear that if I did go the specialist would just focus on my body size for being the cause of my anxiety; I do understand this obviously makes it worse but I know how to work on that myself I've tried all the things they recommend for getting over anxiety but they haven't worked and honestly, I want to go down the medicine route is it possible to just jump straight to this and am I even allowed to have any medicine like that at 16? Thank you for reading; sorry if it doesn't make sense I found it hard to talk about this...