I feel like as I get older, my anxiety manifests in different ways.

When I was younger (in my early to late teens) leaving the house was a struggle as I felt like everyone was staring at me, I constantly felt ‘exposed’ wherever I went. I would wear long sleeves and pants everyday, you would never catch me on a singlet or t-shirt, or shorts.

Now that I’m older (27F) I have overcome that quite a bit, but I’ve started developing phobias and I guess dark/scary thoughts about things I had never considered.

My two examples are:
- Fear of flying: I have solo travelled the world and flown more than 40 times on some VERY dodgy airlines (from my backpacker days), and have never been a nervous flyer. But earlier this year I went on a 1 hour domestic flight and had a full-blown panic attack mid-air. I started crying and everything, convinced that we were going down. And the same thing happened on the flight back, I couldn’t rationalise it.

- Looking at the stars: I used to absolutely love star-gazing and would seek to look at a clear night sky. Now whenever I see lots of stars on a clear night my mind goes straight to “what if I just saw a huge meteor coming towards earth that was going to kill us all”, and I can’t help but feel sick about how scary space is. I have even had reoccurring nightmares about meteors crashing into the earth/knowing we’re all going to die.

I know I sound a bit crazy. Has anybody else experienced this?