hey guys. what's up? so today i am going tokind of share with you some, kind of personal details about my life, i guess. i've kindof wanted to make a video on this for awhile now, i've just honestly never gotten aroundto it and i've never really known how to word it, so if this video's a little fumble-y orkind of long, i'm sorry. i'm just playing this one by ear. so basically as you can probablyread, because i've probably put it as the title at this point, i waned to kind of talkabout what it's like for me, personally, living with really bad social anxiety and mild paranoia.this is something i've very, very, much dealt with my entire life. it's not a new thingfor me. i know it's in my head but it doesn't mean that it doesn't still happen and it doesn'tstill effect me to some degree. although i
do know that it's in my head at this point,i have it somewhat under control. i just kind of wanted to make a video about it becausei know i can't be the only person out in the world who feels this way and maybe if youfeel this way, you'll feel less alone from this video. so. there's that. i very verymuch think that my paranoia and my anxiety come in a pair together. i definitely thinkthey kind of feed off of each other. i guess the first memory i have of being paranoidwas whenever my whole family still lived together we had a three story house in tennessee andi absolutely refused to take a shower upstairs is no one else was on that floor of the housebecause for some reason i thought that made me very susceptible to be being murdered.now mind you, at this time i'm probably 5
and 6 years old so i really hadn't seen aton of scary movies. i don't know where these ideas came from. but for some reason, i wasvery, very, uncomfortable taking a shower on that story of the house is no one elsewas on that story of the house because i felt like, "i'm for sure going to get murderedup here." my second memory of being paranoid comes from me being 8 years old. this is kindof a different form of paranoia that i've developed where i feel like i'm being watchedor recorded or people have cameras hidden somewhere in the room. it was when i was takinga shower at my dad's house after my mom and dad had divorced and he was just very persistentlike, "you have to take a shower before we go. you have to take a shower." and for somereason that was just like really weird to
me and i was like, i don't know. i've neverliked my dad. i've never gotten along with him. for some reason i thought he was kindacreepy, so i was like, "this old creep is probably trying to like, film me naked." soi searched the entire bathroom for a camera, of corse i didn't find anything, but thisis just my paranoia obviously. and the third earliest memory i have of being paranoid is--i'mkind of explaining these because these are three different paranoid symptoms i guess.my this instance was in 4th grade, that was the first time i had ever had a male teacherand it was the end of the year and he had given me a hug goodbye, you know, whatever,no big deal. and i went home just thinking, "this guy totally put a camera on me whenhe hugged me. like for sure, for sure, he's
weird. he wants to watch me for some reasonhe totally planted some camera onto this sweater." i got rid of that sweater. i never wore itagain. i like shoved it under things so it wouldn't be able to see me in any way. andi know that sounds crazy, but this is what i did. this is the truth. still been paranoidabout a lot of things that probably aren't true at all. i am constantly convinced thatsomebody is in the air vents anywhere that i go to the bathroom. i'm convinced there'speople up in the air ducts watching me go to the bathroom because they're weird andfor some reason they want to see that and i've also been convinced that there's camerasup in the air vents because that seems like the best place to hide something to me i guessand i used to not be able to use the bathroom
unless the cupboard doors were open underneaththe sink so i knew no one was under there. no cameras were there or anything. i'm thegirl who will look inside of every cabinet if i'm in a new place because i'm making surenobody is in there. i know this all sounds crazy. i realize that it's crazy. i realizethis is in my head. i realize that this is not a real thing, however it doesn't stopme from checking. i still have to check. kind of relating into my anxiety now, i guess ireally started noticing being very anxious around the time i was in middle school iswhen my anxiety really started to kind of rev up and then high school was just a nightmarefor me, but that's a whole other story. i got really into for some reason, i got superfascinated with columbine. if you know what
columbine is, i'm sorry. if you don't knowwhat columbine is, i don't recommend looking into it. i get like, shaky when i talk aboutit. columbine was, to my knowledge, one of the first mass killings at a high school andit was terrible and it was awful and the high school was also equipped with security camerasso there's actual footage of this shooting that you can find on youtube. i've seen everysingle video. i've heard every single 911 call that's recorded. i've seen and heardit all, which probably honestly, in retrospect, obviously wasn't a good idea for me becauseever since then, because i don't ever really remember having this fear before that, butever since then, i've been terrified of being shot at random. large crowds really freakme out. which is why i had such a problem
with high school is it's a huge crowd of peopleand i could be one at random. i live really close to houston, which is a big city andi never, ever, ever, ever feel safe in houston, especially now that i have purple hair. ifeel like i'm just an easy target. i feel like i just stand out and somebody could easilysee me, spot me, shoot me, really fast and that freaks me out. not enough to dye my hairback, obviously because i realize that this is crazy. i know it's in my head so i can'tlet it effect that much but. my anxiety gets so bad in large crowds. it's pretty bad. thisis kind of the whole reason i honestly don't want a big wedding is because the idea ofeverybody starring at me at one point really genuinely freaks me out. it makes me superuncomfortable. any time i've ever been called
up for an award, whether it be attendance,that's a joke. whether it be whatever. any time i've ever been called up on stage tosay anything or do anything, i get super nervous. my mind just goes like, 100% blank. i can'tremember anything. i can't remember my own name. i can't remember like, literally justlike blank in my mind. i start to kind of panic. recently my boyfriend got an awardand i knew he was getting this award and whenever they called his name i started just like shakinguncontrollably. i was just freaking out because i knew everyone in the class room was goingto turn around and look at him. which means they're kind of going to be looking at metoo and i started shaking a lot and i'm trying to take photos of him for his mom and i'mjust like, "can't hold this camera. oh my
god people are starring at me." you know that'skind of mildly awkward. i was playing bingo the other night with my friends and my friendnext to me won bingo so i knew everyone in the bingo hall is going to be looking overat us. so i started kind of like shaking and freaking out. no one really noticed. i kindof played it off. but just situations where i know a lot of people are going to be lookingat me, really, really spikes my anxiety a lot. which is crazy. i mean i don't know ifyou guys have noticed or not but i'm going to go ahead and point it out; in some of myvideos where i'm like showing you products up close and stuff, you'll see like my handsare shaking and that's not something i can control. that's my anxiety because i knowpeople are going to be watching this which
is, you know it scares me but at the sametime, i'm trying to get over it so. kind of always had paranoia so i honestly thing myanxiety stems from my paranoia. things got so bad for me in high school that i actuallystopped going to high school all together when i was around 16 and then my mom pulledme out of high school so i could finish up doing home schooling because, there was justno way in hell i was going to go to school. my anxiety would get so bad that i would actuallyphysically become sick. i would get really bad stomach pains. it was just like terrible.i couldn't push through it. it was like extreme nausea that i just couldn't work past. soeventually my mom was like, "okay you need to finish school. let's take you out if thisis going to be the best solution." and i did.
i graduated. i got my degree. everything wasgreat and fine. the pain, the physical pain i was feeling from my anxiety was very muchreal at the time. and it's crazy! that did actually kind of happen to me again wheneveri was working at a terrible job that i hated. i had been at this job for about two yearsand it was just awful. i really hated it. and then i started noticing in the secondyear that i was there, all of my anxiety was coming raging back. i was getting very, verysick in the mornings. there was several days i had to call out of work because i was sophysically sick from being so anxious, i couldn't come into work. i'm 23 now and around thetime i was 14 i smoked pot for the first time ever in my life and it seemed really awesomeand it seemed really fun, like most drugs
do when you first start doing them, i'm sure.i continued to smoke pot pretty heavily from ages 15-17, 18. well 18 i probably just smokedoccasionally so like maybe twice a month. no big deal to me apparently. whenever i was19 i moved to a city, austin, texas, that is very, very much into drug culture and thingsand i became very, very, prone to smoking. i was smoking pot probably every single dayfrom, seriously, from the time i was 19 up until four months ago was when i finally decidedokay this is enough. this isn't that fun anymore. let's quit. so for about four years i wasgetting high every single day. and i had kind of fooled myself into thinking that was helpingtreat my anxiety. i was like, "no. this is helping. i definitely feel much more likechill and relaxed." when in reality, it was
to a degree helping my anxiety but it wasspiking my paranoia really, really, badly. so i had kind of fooled myself into thinkingthat i was actually helping my anxiety and my problems when in reality, i was kind ofmaking them worse just because i was spiking my paranoia so so much by smoking all thetime. basically my paranoia started to persistently get way worse. i started to kind of hear things?and i know i'm going to sound totally crazy but i'm going to go ahead and say it becausei'm trying to be totally honest here but i started to kind of hear things whenever iwas trying to go to sleep. i would head people talking. this isn't like i would hear clearcut voices talking to me in my head. this is like, i would hear two people having aconversation outside of my window off in the
distance that i could faintly barely hear.just enough to make out that people were talking. not enough to where i could actually hearwhat these fictional people were actually saying. you know, at that point i would shutanything off in the room that was making noise and then like listen very closely and realizeno one is talking outside of my window. there's no one outside. there's times where i've evengone outside because apparently, contrary to what i believed is, i am the girl who investigatesnoises. you know where they're in the scary movie like, "what's that noise?!" "let's gofind out!" apparently i am the girl who investigates the noises. time and time again i realizenobody is talking. nobody is outside. it is 100% all in my head. which is crazy. i know!i mean among many things. i'd walk into grocery
stores and people would stare at me, thisactually does happen because i live in a small town and i have purple hair and tattoos whichis super uncommon where i live. people do stare at me a lot. my boyfriend tells me allthe time, "it's just because you're pretty." and i'm like. it's still kind of rude to stareat people! i'm sorry like. say something to me but don't just like awkwardly stare atme. it's really weird. it makes me super uncomfortable. but for the longest time whenever people wouldstare at me and stuff i'd be like, "what the hell is her problem? like what? god i can'tlike walk here?! good lord! like what is going on?!" so i'd get like super revved up. i'dget super anxious. i get super testy. i was super, easily agitated i guess is a good wayto put it. about four months ago i decided
i needed to stop doing drugs. it's not a goodthing to do. it kind of kills you no matter what it is, even though, i consider pot tobe pretty harmless, it wasn't doing good things to me mentally. so it was definitely timeto stop. so i quit and ever since then, things have been kind of weird. i definitely haverealized a lot of the things i thought were being revved up were actually just in my headanyway so that's kind of a new experience. overall my anxiety has gone way down. my paranoiahas gone way down. still there. i don't think it's every going to go away. it's always beenthere. i think it's always still going to be there. however, i do not 10/10 do not reccomendself medicating for it. it really honestly made things worse for me when i thought itwas making it better. it was just totally
making things worse. so just for that reasonalone. i won't ever do drugs again. i'm crazy enough as they put it. the whole reason iwaned to make this video and be so candid and be so honest is because like i said iknow i'm not the only one out there who feels this way or thinks this way. i wanted to makethis video just for the sake of maybe helping one person out there so if you did get anythingout of this video, please let me know. that would seriously make my day. i'm taking arisk making this video just because first off, very few people know that i've been livingwith paranoia my entire life. second off, pretty much a lot of people also don't knowthat i've lived with severe anxiety my entire life or even what it has steamed from andwhy i'm so afraid of crowds and being starred
at. things like that. and third off, a lotof people didn't know that i was kind of a heavy drug user for about four years so that'skind of really embarrassing honestly, but. like i said i just wanted to be as candidand as honest as possible. let me know if you liked this video. let me know if you haveany questions or if you just need someone to talk to. please honestly feel free to messageme on here. i will never be offended. i will never be annoyed. and thank you guys so muchfor watching. this has kind of helped calm me down a little bit and i do really appreciateit. i hope to see you guys soon. bye!