For the first time, many people are able to see what having anxiety really feels like, it is a horrible feeling to experience and it is often very hard to explain to someone lucky enough not to have it.
These are some very representative portraits by someone who actually has experienced anxiety. It gives a glimpse for those who have loved ones going through anxiety, to understand what they are going through.
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Photography student Katie Joy Crawford knows what it feels like to be anxious. We’re not talking about just hand-wringing anxious — you know, the kind of anxiety you feel when you’re waiting to hear back from a job you want, or a person you like.
We’re talking about the full body, anxious. Anxious for no identifiable reason, anxious. Anxious about everything. Anxious all the time.
And it started young. “I had my first panic attack when I was 11,” she told Hello Giggles in an interview.
“I wasn’t supposed to know the fear that strong yet. I was supposed to play house and have sleepovers.” But her parents had recently divorced and her brother was battling cancer, and the stress took a physical and mental toll on Crawford.
“Before I knew it, I was hyperventilating, crying, shaking, begging my mom to make it go away, praying God would let me sleep,” she says. After the panic attack finally resolved, Crawford was a changed person.
“I remember nothing looked the same anymore. It’s like everything was muted . . . or even just different hues than before. My world was gone. And I’ve never found it again.”
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But after struggling with anxiety and panic attacks for several years, the LSU student decided not only to confront her demons but turn them into some seriously powerful visual art.
And so, “My Anxious Heart” was born. It’s a gorgeous but haunting collection of photographs where Crawford acts as “instigator and victim” in 12 different self-portraits.
The pictures — which show Crawford in a tub of water surrounded by black tulle or with a white cloud over her head — show the different ways anxiety and depression can hamper and hem one’s daily life.
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Source: Haunting self-portraits reveal what anxiety really feels like
