When you see a news story about anxiety, most of the time it's illustrated with a photo like this:
To help us better illustrate what anxiety really looks like, we asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to share a photo of a time they were dealing with anxiety.
1. "I’m just sort of floating around watching myself from a distance."
2. "It's exhausting having to cope with my brain always convincing me something is wrong."
3. "It feels like every muscle in my body is contracting into a tiny ball in the middle of my chest."
4. "Not a day goes by where I don't feel some effects of anxiety."
5. "It lurks behind you all the time, even when you feel so good about life."
6. "I live with anxiety on a day-to-day basis."
7. "Because most haven’t seen my anxiety at its worst, they don’t seem to understand that it exists."
8. "Anxiety keeps me from doing the things I want because it makes me feel like I'm a burden to everyone."
9. "Behind the smile, the makeup, and the happy façade, I am still broken."
10. "I’ve always had anxiety, but it got worse while I was in college."
11. "It has gotten progressively worse to the point where I needed to start taking medication."
12. "You feel like you’re either a pretender or a fraud."
13. "It becomes a vicious circle."
14. "I was just shut down and told to get over it by a lot of people."
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Not all anxiety looks the same, for more information check out Mind's page on anxiety.