Anxiety and disassociation

I walk down the main street of my small town, feeling good in my sunglasses and long skirt. My shoulders are squared, my head held high.

Two girls walk towards me. I know them well, we've gone to school together since we were six. My confidence is shattered. My pulse starts to race, my palms are sweating. In my head, the voices begin.

"They're looking at you."

"They're laughing at you."

"You look stupid."

I worry about everything, about how I look, how I'm walking, what they're thinking. I mutter hi as they pass, but my voice sounds high and weak to me. They smile and are past me. I takes me a moment to calm down, and my self confidence is gone for the rest of the afternoon.

Maybe everyone gets these type of feeling sometimes. If so, I feel for them. I've gotten to the point where I must do something to alleviate my anxiety, something to bring myself back to reality, and the only things I could think of for a long time, things that would work fast enough, were suicide and cutting.

Often these feeling would be felt in my Algebra II class. The work was difficult and I felt I couldn't handle it. I reached the point where as soon as I walked into class my brain would shut off. I often felt at the point of tears and would cut myself so as to not cry. I couldn't ask the teacher for help because i couldn't admit I didn't understand.

I recently went back to this place in a class where I learned of yet another episode of school violence, the shootings in Georgia one month after the Columbine massacre. My mind felt like it was full of static, I couldn't think or focus on anything. I wanted to cry but I couldn't. I wanted to scream but I couldn't. The only thing I could do is sit and stare at the computer screen, my hangs shaking.

I have been told that this is a form of disassociation. It is nearly as bad as anxiety and is, like anxiety, accompanied with an almost overwhelming need to do anything, anything at all, to overcome that emotion.

Outside of cutting or suicide, both of which are really out of the question for me now, I've tried to think of a few times I was able to overcome this emotion.

1. When I talk to people. My best friend is a younger girl obsessed with "boybands" who's happiness and energy manage to pull me out of anything, and if that fails she'll give me a hug.

2. Writing. Posting on BUS has been the best thing, but I also will write poems, sometimes that works, for though i cannot really form thoughts while in this mood, if I just focus on the emotions and sort of write them down blindly, it makes me feel better, and often results in some of my better poetry. I once wrote an e-mail to an old friend, just telling him how I felt. Whether you sent it or not doesn't mean a thing.

3. Physical activity, preferably something silly with a friend. My boyfriend once grabbed my arm and pulled me outside, at 8:30 pm, and proceeded to run me barefoot around two blocks, including past the windows of a busy restaurant. I was laughing to hard to feel bad about anything.

The fact is, these really work more for anxiety then disassociation, and I know some people who suffer from the former to a level I have never experienced. Still, these are always worth a try.