Hey all, I’m a rising college sophomore who has been struggling with anxiety for a while and was wondering if anyone experiences this/has any advice. 

Every time I go from home to school or from school to home, I get an absolutely brutal dose of anxiety (combined with a bit of natural stress and nostalgia that already makes transition periods hard). It’s really difficult for me to come home for the weekend because even though while I’m at school I’m happy and generally well-adjusted, with good control of my anxiety, the day or two before I leave home the anxiety becomes really really bad. It’s getting to the point where I don’t even want to come home anymore (at least for any short period) because I know I’ll be hit with really bad anxiety before I leave. I tried to communicate this to my parents, but I think they didn’t understand and were just a bit hurt. It’s really hard to articulate why exactly I get anxious before I get home, as I do genuinely enjoy going to school a lot, but just even starting to think about moving in, going to class, and doing all the things I do normally at college makes me really anxious. 

This gets even worse because I go to a very rigorous school, and I use home as a place to take some well-earned rest and relaxation. So, when I’m about to leave, I just start feeling really terrified and guilty that I haven’t been working and that when I get back to school, I’m going to be suddenly buried by work. This really hasn’t happened, so I know it’s irrational, but it’s so hard to deal with and I feel like I have no one to talk about it with.

I guess if you read this for, thanks for reading, and for existing in general, because I really needed to communicate these feelings with someone who (I hope) understands them.