Mostly my rambling on my horrible love life

A rant, but an important one

So the other day my mom told me that my anxiety is literally made up, she said this in a joking way, but she's obviously never had a panic attack before, she proceeded to explain that she thinks it's just "normal teenage anxiety" and that I was actually diagnosed with ADD, (Attention Deficient Disorder) (basically saying I have panic attacks for attention) and then said that she disagrees, and I really just need to get this off my chest and beg whoever reads this not to say something like that to someone. It is one of the worse things you can do to them.

Because listen, when you're having a panic attack, you're very aware of how stupid you look and feel, you know it's all in your head, and while you're just trying to be a normal human being, you suddenly can't breathe, and you wonder why you're doing this to yourself, because no one is making you have a panic attack, it's all in your head, and just that knowledge alone makes you go crazy, so when someone opens up to you and try to make sense of something like this, and you reply with "it's just hormones, but according to the doctor it's because you want attention" IT REALLY SCREWS THEM UP, OKAY??

Because WE KNOW it's in our heads and WE KNOW it's annoying and WE KNOW we're being a nuisance to you, but trust me, if we could just suddenly "stop that" we would. We like breathing too, you know. We don't necessarily like feeling unsafe at school, or at home, or in church, we don't like jumping every time we bump into something, we don't try to stutter in the middle of a conversation, ANXIETY IS REAL AND WE CANT JUST STOP.

She's said some stuff like this before to me, and I will never forget a word of it. Making fun of people with anxiety, or telling them to snap out of it isn't cool. We're constantly trying to snap out of it, we don't necessarily enjoy being in everyone's way.

I just thought I needed to say something, because all to often no one does anything about it, because talking about their anxiety makes them feel more anxiety, and so they don't necessarily want to start a conversation about it, or "explain" it. (That seems to be my mother's favorite word these days, I'd like to have my own thoughts too thanks) so, to sum it up, please please please PLEASE don't make fun of mental disorders, none of it is funny, none of it is cute, okay, it's just really freaking annoying and hurtful to be told these things that you're feeling aren't real, or important because all we want to do is hide when we have panic attacks, and that's the same for many if not all people with mental disorders.

Side note: telling a person having anxiety to "breathe" really doesn't help. At all. We're on this position because we CAN'T breathe, trust me though, we're trying.

Thanks for reading, feel free to share with friends and family, and remember to just be thoughtful of other people and their problems, we don't want pity, but we also don't want to feel like we're nothing. So, if you don't have anything nice to say or do, ignore it, we're fine, we're not going to die from a panic attack, it just feels like we are.