Hey everyone,

Growing up, I was always a super sociable kid. When I got to middle school, though, I just became pretty shy overall and didn’t really talk to anyone I didn’t know. I’m in my second year of college rn (1st semester at a new university) and I think things are getting a lot worse. I can’t even speak sometimes. For example, we’ll talk in small groups of 4-5 people and I’ll have something I want to say, but just can’t. I keep telling myself I’ll start talking, but don’t. The other day I spoke up anyways and my voice was extremely faint, almost non existent. I somehow, and I have no clue how, managed to give a few minute presentation a few weeks ago and when I sat back down I realized I had no idea what I had even said while I was up there. I had completely shut it out. Anytime a professor/classmate starts to say something to me, my heart immediately starts beating extremely fast and I get this pain in my stomach. It’s even gotten to the point where I panic when my family is talking to me. Sometimes they’ll just ask a simple question and I can barely respond in a non-shakey voice. I hate this and I feel so dumb and worried bc this has never happened before. My head constantly hurts, I can’t sleep right, and I just hate not being able to talk to people like a normal person.

If it means anything, I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was around 5, and I was a super hyper and bad kid. I’ve outgrown that aspect of ADHD now, but definitely still suffer from the other aspects of it. Also, maybe unrelated, I sleep extremely bad. I wake up anywhere from 8-10 times every single night and often times much more than that. I’d say I average around 4 or less hours of sleep a night.

The only thing I can assume is that I’m just getting really bad anxiety. I don’t think it’s something I can fix by myself, but the only other option would be medication which I’m not super keen on taking and am unsure how it could even help. I mean, I’m aware that I’m super anxious and I feel like I’ll still be aware of that if I take medication, so how would it even help?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I just want to talk to people like normal again and not constantly have stomach pains, a rapid heartbeat, and headaches.