Anxiety Sucks

Hey guys!! I know this is my traditional type of post,  but I really have been having trouble with this lately and I just needed somewhere to vent.

Anxiety really really sucks you guys. I've always been the kind of person who will get nervous about new experiences,  I've never liked being in front of people on stage or for presentations.  Even small groups would scare me, but I've never experienced anxiety quite like this. 

Ever since December my anxiety has been far worse than its ever been. I was on my way to college one morning like usual, listening to music, singing along and all of a sudden my heart started racing, I was having trouble breathing, my hands were tingling, I got a headache,  and felt dizzy. Against my better judgment I continued to drive to school and after about 30 minutes of class realized I couldn't handle it. I was afraid to try and drive since I was dizzy so I ended up having to call my parents to come pick me up. At the time, I knew I was anxious about being dizzy (because I've fainted once before when I had a panic attack when I was around 13 or so) but I didn't realize my anxiety was causing all my symptoms. 

I felt slightly better once I was home, but I continued to let my mom drive me to school the remaining few days of semester before Christmas break.  Over Christmas everything went pretty well, I was still feeling somewhat dizzy, but mostly ok.

On the Sunday before school started back however,  it happened again. I was sitting in church talking to my little cousin  before service started and I started having trouble breathing, my heart started racing, and I got very dizzy. I got panicky, but managed to get through Sunday school. After that I ended up going and sitting in the nursery for the rest of service. (I work in the nursery anyways but I normally go down later)

Once that happened I told my dad that day I wanted to go to the doctor about it because I didn't know what was wrong with me,  why I kept getting dizzy.

I went to the doctor the next morning and as soon as he walked in, he seemed to have an idea of what was wrong (but he didn't tell me) after asking questions and examining me,  doing blood work. He told me he was pretty certain I was experiencing anxiety and that was the cause of my dizziness.  He said I was probably hyperventilating and thus causing that to occur. Which in turn made me start to panic more because I'm afraid of fainting again.   He told me though that he didn't want to put me on anxiety medicine,  and I don't want to be on it, because the side effects could be worse than my current problem (s). So he just told me if it doesn't get better come back.

Well initially it seemed to be getting better, I knew what the problem was and had/have some control over it, if I can avoid getting panicky,  I'm usually ok. 

Unfortunately I'm still having some trouble controlling it. Recently I've felt quite anxious and been experiencing more dizziness and stuff and my deep breathing helps some but it's not helping as much as I'd like. Like during class one day, I did my best to take notes, but I honestly don't know what the teacher even said because I had started to get panicky and was just focusing on controlling my breathing and the clock, I wanted to get out of there and go home as soon as possible (thankfully that was my last class of the day).

I'm sure if any of you guys experience anxiety you can understand how this feels. All I want is to go back to normal, to feel normal.  I don't want to have to worry "what if I panic? " "what if I get dizzy and faint? " but I honestly don't know what else to do, I have to keep going out and interacting with people,  going to college, but it's so stressful sometimes. I'm still having my mom drive me as much as possible. ... It really just sucks :( 

If you guys have ANY tips on dealing with this or can relate please please leave a comment! 

(Ps Writing this was really beneficial for me you guys, because I realized while I was writing I hadn't even told my boyfriend most if this stuff, because I was afraid of what he'd say, which is stupid because he's amazingly supportive of me, but I was still scared. Because I realized that though, I told him and I feel much better about that atleast. Hopefully I can truly get control of my anxiety soon too!)