Growing up with anxiety due to trauma and not understanding yourself or the why behind it is tough. Especially when you’re a Christian and you struggle with it and you have episodes that are overwhelming and body controlling & then you go to tell a parent and they throw Bible verses at you or just tell you that you’ve always had this and then just leave you there to fend for yourself. Welp, that’s me. I’ve struggled with anxiety for as long as I can remember. But I understand, now as an adult, where it comes from — it came from trauma & a messed up, unstable childhood that I had no control over. It came from constantly hopping around from place to place as a child because your parents went through a divorce & they’re fighting as to who is going to have which child. & your nervous system is disrupted, deregulated & overwhelmed just while you’re trying to grow & learn life. But yet life is hijacked from you because of dysfunction.
One thing most people wouldn’t understand just by looking at me is that doing interviews, Zoom calls & just speaking to people I don’t know is actually very challenging, especially when you desire to do such things but yet feel trapped in your body because of the intense manifestations of anxiety coming in randomly & now you’re struggling before you ever get on the call. Or when you’re on the call and you get “interviewed” instead of information that you were coming in with the mindset of, and now your voice is stuck because you’re feeling put on the spot when that’s not the intention you had coming into the meeting. These are experiences I’ve actually had, and then once I got off the call I felt truly embarrassed because it was like I couldn’t talk even though I knew the things that were being said but couldn’t articulate them. And people think something is wrong with you, then you begin to spiral into feeling like something is wrong with you because of it. And you start to internalize the conversation and feel frustrated because they just simply don’t understand, but you’re just as bright and intelligent & articulate as anyone else.
When I would struggle to get on interviews and having to be “on” and in pressure talking situations, and when I couldn’t do the corporate world and be in office settings. Or meetings. And one-on-ones with strangers, it shows up at selective times. I could be completely fine one moment before a Zoom call, then when it comes time for a different meeting with a different person I could have an anxiety attack before I even get on, but to the person on the other side of the screen I look normal, but they didn’t know I just went through an anxiety attack.
If I could go back and speak to a younger version of myself, or to anyone navigating this right now, this is what I would want them to know.
Nothing is wrong with you & you are bright, intelligent & articulate in your own way & it’s ok to be different.
That realization changed everything for me.
And maybe that’s what understanding yourself does. It brings you out of the dark, gives you grace for yourself, and finally lets you work with who you are instead of against it.
Originally published on Medium on September 28, 2026. Republished with permission. For another perspective, read August Pritchett’s personal story about autism and selective mutism in women. Read more from Mikayla on Medium.
