"My dad was a preacher at a really small, traditional congregation when we lived in Michigan. There were about 40 members, and they were all really old; I was the youngest member, the second youngest were my parents.

I started to struggle with anxiety in high school, probably my freshman or sophomore year, and at the time I didn’t know what it was. Everyone was stressed, so I just thought it was stress. But then I began to develop really bad testing anxiety. I couldn't finish tests and I was failing tests. I would get so anxious that I would skip whatever class I before them.

One test in particular; I was in math class, which is my worst subject, and I had, what I would consider my first panic attack. I had to stand up and walk out, which was really embarrassing for me. I liked school and my friends at school, and this was actually my favorite teacher. But I had to walk out because I couldn’t breathe anymore.

When I left the teacher came out into the hallway and talked to me. He said, ‘You know my daughter struggles with panic attacks and I think that this is what’s happening. Let me call an EMT.’ So, the EMT came and I was still trying to catch my breath. She then counted with me and helped me learn how to count. After that happened, I didn’t do anything.

That summer, I didn’t really talk to my parents, friends, or anyone at church about my attack. I thought I had it because I was bad at math and bad at tests. That my panic attack was an isolated incident.

Later that summer, I went to a concert with my friends that summer, it was Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z. I was sitting at the end of the row; I was with all my friends and I was sitting at the end. And then, all of a sudden, I couldn’t get over the thought that everyone was talking and that I wasn’t a part of the conversation and that there were strangers sitting next to me. Suddenly, I got that feeling again. I couldn’t breathe and my heart began to racing, I just started crying. My friends didn’t know what was happening, so at that moment, they moved me to the middle.

When I woke up the next morning, I told my dad that I kept having these reactions to certain situations and that I had other reactions not so severe and that my heart would race and my throat would close up. He then told me that my family had a long history, on both sides, of anxiety and depression. He also told me that he had dealt with social anxiety, but that’s not what I had. I really liked being around people and I was really extroverted. So because of that, he didn’t really know how to approach these specific cases that were causing me this intense anxiety.

That’s when he and my mom found a counselor for me, which I was really not wanting to do. By this time, my friends knew something was up. I was also a waitress at the time and that was also giving me a lot of anxiety. I felt like the more panic attacks the more I was getting; it was like a snowball effect.

I didn’t know what my first panic attack was, I thought it was a heart attack. So not knowing alone gave me even more anxiety. I literally thought that I was going to die.

My friends knew that I wasn’t a dramatic person, so it was hard for them to grasp the weight of the situation. Anxiety was one of those things that was romanticized in high school. It was something that people either didn’t talk about or posted about it on Tumblr. It was who they were and I did not want it to be who I was.

I saw a counselor three times a week to help overcome my testing anxiety. Well, that kind of subsided once I started taking tests in the library. At this time, we still hadn’t really talked to our church since they were isolated incidents. It wasn’t affecting everything I did; it was just affecting a lot of the things I did at that point.

Around the start of my junior year of high school was when my anxiety started to affect things on a regular basis. Every few days an attack would popup. My counselor and I still hadn’t nailed down everything that was causing them, why I was having them, and what my triggers were. We were working on it but I had multiple triggers, and that was the problem. We would find one and then, soon after, we would find another one. I was pretty against any medication at this time, but I continued with my counseling.

Since I was a preacher's daughter, I felt a lot of pressure, as any young person in the church would. I felt a lot of pressure to be “on” during Sunday’s and Wednesday’s, to be a good example of what my generation was because a lot of them had very negative associations with millennials. My sister had rebelled early on and the church knew that, so they kind of looked to me as a good representation of the students at the local high school, people my own age, and young Christians. That pressure didn’t get to me until the anxiety came up since there were days that I didn’t even have the energy to be on. Panic attacks especially take a lot of emotion and physical energy out of you and I would get them before, during and after church. There just wasn’t a good way for me to tell them what was going on without feeling like I was disappointing them; even though I fully knew they would’ve been accepting and loving, but as a teenager you don’t feel that way. You feel like people around you don’t understand the way you want them to. I didn’t want any of them to see my anxiety as a weakness. I didn’t want them to think my life was over, even though I thought it was over. I didn’t want to be dramatic and I really didn’t it want to become who I was — especially to these people.

During my senior year of high school, I agreed to house-sit for a couple at my church. They lived in the country, had four dogs, and a bunch of chickens. It was during the winter and we were having some of the biggest storms we’ve had in years. I live in Michigan so we get snow, ice, the whole-shebang. I was out there for a week and as soon as I would fall asleep, in this house I was unfamiliar with in the country, the dogs would start barking at the wind and I would wake up. It became a snowball effect and there was a time when I hadn’t slept in 48 hours. I was so riddled with anxiety day-in and day-out. It was such a small stupid thing, that I was staying alone at this house, but it was a creepy house in a place I was unfamiliar with. I would get maybe two hours of sleep, which then caused panic attacks during school from being sleep deprived.

It was my final day there and I was driving back to the house from school to grab the rest my things. I had already packed-up some of my things and I had it sitting on the bench seat of my truck; I turned a corner and it all fell on top of me. It wasn’t a big deal, I could’ve pushed it off, but I immediately began to panic. I drove off the road on accident since I was having this panic attack and ended up in the ditch. At this point, I literally thought I was going to die. It happened right in front of the school so my peers came out and I was stuck in this ditch. I was so deep in the snow that I had to climb through my back window. Luckily I was fine, and my truck was fine. I wasn’t hurt, I was just so panicky.

After called the people that owned house and told them that I couldn’t go back and that I was sending my mom to close everything up and to pick-up the rest my stuff. I couldn’t go back because it was a house, to me, that represented a very low point in my anxiety. It was just a very anxious time for me.

So now they knew. They were the first people from church to know. They were very understanding and they were a younger couple, younger being like 50. They were understanding like I hoped they be, and I was so embarrassed that I had to tell them in the first place. I felt like a failure. It was a physical representation of what I was afraid of happening.

That trip though, represents a time when I realized that I needed to go on medication. That I needed something, if I was alone were to have a panic attack, that I would have something there to help me. Through the help of my counselor and parents, we found what medications worked best for me.

This was when my dad finally went in front of the congregation and asked for prayers. He told them that I was dealing with anxiety, as I was sitting in the pew, in all aspects of my life and that it was also causing our family some anxiety as well because they didn’t want to see me go through that. I was so embarrassed. I was mortified that I had showed weakness in any way, shape, or form in front of the congregation that had looked at me as a good-solid-girl that could handle things. I was very level headed, I was pragmatic and I had great communication skills. The fact that I hadn’t been able to communicate that clearly and efficiently without affecting the people around me, annoyed and embarrassed me.

Once I moved away for college, I had gotten my medication figured out. During my junior year of high school, I was diagnosed with panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, and I had been on medication for both. I now, as a college senior, only take the panic disorder medication. I luckily haven’t been back to such a dark place with my mental illness. I’m lucky because my dark place was driving my car into a ditch and not getting enough sleep. For some people, that dark place, is much darker and they don’t have the right outlets.

While my church wasn’t an outlet for me, I had enough support from others that gave me an outlet. I wish my church could’ve been an outlet for me and I wish that I felt comfortable there, but I think that’s my own doing. I really can’t blame the church, I think that they would’ve welcomed me with open-arms, mental illness and all. I’m sure a lot of them had dealt with mental illness before, but since they were from such an older generation they weren’t as willing to talk about it. It was something that my dad didn’t talk about in his sermons and it wasn’t something that we talked about in a biblical or spiritual perspective. We actually talked a lot about inner peace at church and about finding peace through salvation — knowing where you were going when you die and finding peace in that, while praying and being wholeheartedly confident in your faith.

When you have anxiety, it’s hard to do regardless, no matter how strong your faith is. I don’t think the church was a place I felt comfortable talking about it, but I wouldn’t say it was a bad experience or that they shamed me for it. However, the pressures of growing-up in a community like that and a system like that, especially in churches with very few youth, or one in my case, it’s hard, it’s hard to disappoint people in that way.”