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    14 Pictures That Capture What Anxiety Actually Looks Like

    It’s not as simple as a typical stock photo.

    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.