Are you suffering from an anxiety disorder? you are not alone

It started for me later than many people. I was 31 when I had my first panic attack.

I am a doctoral student, living alone in a new city and after one semester of the program I was not sure if I was a member.

If you asked me if I was feeling stressed that morning, I would probably say no – and believed it. But one night, I drove on a remote highway and my chest suddenly tightened, my muscles tensed, and my hands began to shake. Out of nowhere I felt like I could not breathe and I was sure I would faint before I could safely get home.

I’ve never experienced anything like this before, so I assumed the worst and headed straight to the hospital. Six hours later – at 4am they sent me home, ensuring that “nothing was wrong,” but my body and brain were screaming against each other.

“Cleanville” was hardly at ease. The next day I had another panic attack, almost every day for the next three months.

I didn’t know what was going on or why. Eventually, I stopped my summer internship and visited my family. I lied to everyone because I was too embarrassed to admit what was going on. I wasn’t sure if I would return to school in the fall. But by the end of that summer I had learned to live with anxiety. So, I limped, depressed, and embarrassed at how vulnerable I felt for the next two years, but I was not reluctant to discuss the experience with anyone.

Over time, the season passed with the help of the patient’s doctor and the medications he needed. I would like to share 14 years from now that the difficult days of graduate school are nothing more than distant memories, but the truth is that the same anxiety has sometimes revisited me, especially in more challenging moments in my life.

As I struggled with these challenges early in my career, I am interested in studying mental health as a research researcher at the University of South Florida. For example, I spent most of 2024 studying election-related stress through a series of national research.

Most of my own work focuses on the intersection of politics and mental health, but more general diagnostic data confirms what many people need to hear. If you are struggling with anxiety, panic and depression, you are not alone.

In fact, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, 19% of Americans suffer from anxiety disorders in a given year, but one in three (31%) suffers from these symptoms at least once.

Counting ourselves among a third of Americans suffering from anxiety is important to know that this is not just an emotional phenomenon, but a biological phenomenon. Panic disorder and anxiety are caused by neural structures that cause physiological destruction in our brains, particularly those that cause functions such as threat detection and emotional regulation.

When these systems become unbalanced, they cause a body’s “combat or flight response.” This is a chain of complex chemical reactions that lead to outward symptoms commonly associated with panic attacks. Simply put, physical anxiety is not a personal failure. It is an inevitable consequence of the dysregulated nervous system.

Some people have attributed the recent increase in the rate of anxiety and depression to the fact that people feel less stigmatized about discussing their mental health struggles, and there may be some truth to this. But it is equally true that the rapidly evolving environment has affected our physical, psychological and mental well-being.

We live in a culture that praises certain productivity and encourages social comparisons, surrounded by all sides by digital noise (regulation of the nervous system and biologically incompatible conditions). Simply put, modern life keeps our brains at high alert – we always perform, compare, or respond, but rarely rest.

At the same time, we are also increasingly learning how mental health is deeply shaped by factors often overlooked, such as sleep quality, processed food consumption, and even exposure to environmental toxins. These are not fringe ideas. They are central to a series of research documenting the rates of increased anxiety, depression and mental illness that plague everyday Americans.

I hope that if I can sometimes tell my story among those affected by these symptoms, I can take one thing away from my stories that many others share. Anxiety is not a failure of reasoning, will, or faith. And it is not an antithesis of “inner strength.” It’s simply a conflict between biology and modern life, and we need to talk about it. When we talk about it, we get better.

You are not broken. You are just a human being – and you are not alone.

Stephen Neely is an associate professor at the University of South Florida’s School of Public Relations, specializing in public opinion and research research.