Hi, I hope that you can find some comfort in my story to know that you’re not the only one struggling and that you’re not alone. For the past year or so I have been experiencing the most severe anxiety I’ve ever had.  my whole life I have struggled with anxiety and depression but could never properly open up about it to those I loved. I never wanted to be a bother or inconvenience them in any way so I just kept to myself. which was manageable when it was very mild, but now that it affects my daily life its a bit of a different situation. I can’t pin exactly when it started but I think I have backtracked the trauma to sometime in September, I took melatonin to try and get a good night’s rest before my early morning. my body had a weird reaction to it and I thought I was having an allergic reaction it was very scary, I had never felt anything like that before that tight throat feeling. it didn’t really affect me directly after but then it started worsening somewhere around last Christmas. I was worried about the food that was at Christmas dinner. for some reason, I thought I was allergic to the shrimp that was on my plate even though I had been eating seafood my whole life. I just brushed off the fact I was restricting my diet more and more. no more seafood, nuts, milk, and many other things. then my physical symptoms worsened I would be in my room, reading or drawing or on my phone and I would get obnoxiously nauseated and have no idea why or I would feel like my throat was closing and like I wasn’t gonna be able to breathe, my lungs would ache and I feel like I can’t get a deep breath in. but the worst is always my chest pain, nothing scares me more than when I have pain that’s shooting through my chest. that continued on I felt so sick every day for a week then it would go away there were some red flags so my doctor took me in for some more questions. I got many tests to make sure nothing was severely wrong with me. in one month I had had 6 doctor visits and no answers what so ever. it was never a thought in my mind that it was just anxiety I thought it was me on the verge of death until my doctor screened me and told me I had severe anxiety. fast forward a while and it has spiraled so intensely. I’m about 99% sure I have developed an eating disorder. it is so hard to get diagnosed with one when it really should not be. I think I have an eating disorder called ARFID avoidance restrictive food intake disorder. its where you are scared or avoid food because you think it will make you sick or give you an allergic reaction. my diet has gotten slimmer and slimmer, I barely eat anything and I was never a picky eater I used to love to try new foods and new restaurants but now I’m scared to even eat things I’ve been eating my whole life. an eating disorder paired with my severe anxiety, every day is a struggle, I don’t really have a good support system at the moment either which makes it that much harder. my insurance makes it really hard to get a therapist that doesn’t have a year-long waiting list or a co-pay that will put me out $200 a session. I’m not really sure what to do but I stumbled across this website and thought why not give it a try. I have been very much a shell of the person I used to be. I cannot enjoy things like I used to, I haven’t been able to live out my teen life as much as I should be able to. I rarely leave my house (even before corona) and I’m so mentally drained that I don’t have really any time but to worry. anyways I hope that someone can relate because I’ve never met someone who has shared even similar issues as I do. xo 🙂