It all started in my psychiatrist’s office a few years ago.

It all started in my psychiatrist’s office a few years ago.

He asked how I’d been doing and if I’d had any panic attacks lately. I thought about the last few weeks and all the places I’d gone. Work. Supermarket. Gym. Concert. Friends’ houses. Hardware store. Nope. No panic attacks. But that couldn’t be right.

I thought about it some more and realized that it had been weeks since I had felt any surges of anxiety and months since I’d actually had a panic attack. How was that even possible? Only a few years before, I was in college and having as many as five panic attacks a day.

Even though I wasn’t currently having a lot of problems with anxiety, I was living like I did. It still took a good amount of convincing to get me to go to places where I used to have panic attacks. I’d still go home earlier than my friends on a Saturday night. And I still hated checking my coat at bars or restaurants in case I needed to make a quick escape. Things were better—but I didn’t feel better.

In order to make sense of my lack of anxiety, in order to really feel it, I was going to have to quantify it. I thought that if I could remind myself of how bad things were in college, I could see how different—and how good—my life was now.

From the ages of fourteen through twenty, I faithfully kept a journal. As a teenager, I’d go to the drug store every few months to buy a new marble notebook. I’d spend a lot of time decorating the cover with stickers, drawings, photos, and cut outs from magazines and when I thought the cover was sufficiently cool, I’d start writing in it.

When I got home from my psychiatrist’s office, I took out my journals from college. I got comfortable in my favorite green armchair and started reading. I only had to read a few pages to see how bad things were. I’d written a lot about being sad and tired all the time and how I hated going to class because I’d end up having a panic attack. I kept reading, but the words didn’t seem like mine. They were someone else’s--someone who was in a lot of pain and not sure if she was going to get better. I could barely remember this person—let alone identify with her.

What got me writing the book was simple.
There were no books for teens about anxiety disorder. (There are of course, many self-help-type books on the subject, but they weren’t engaging reads and they didn’t make me feel any less alone.) There are books for teens about drug abuse, depression, rape, suicide, OCD, cutting, learning disabilities, eating disorders…but there were no books about generalized anxiety disorder or panic disorder--ironic since anxiety often plays a major role in other disorders. In short, I wanted representation.