20 Tweets That Capture What Anxiety Feels Like

If you have anxiety, you know the symptoms well—self-consciousness, excessive worry, and sleepless nights, to name a few. But it can be tough to articulate what it's really like to grapple with an anxiety disorder, day in and day out.

In 2017, Sarah Fader, a writer and founder of the mental health nonprofit Stigma Fighters, created the hashtag #ThisIsWhatAnxietyFeelsLike while she was waiting for a friend to text her back. "She wasn't getting back to me and I was experiencing anxiety so I decided to randomly start a hashtag," said Fader. The hashtag went viral as people all over the world shared their anxious thoughts in the form of tweets.

Fader's tweet struck a chord. "People seemed to like it. They were I like, 'I relate to that,'" she said. The response she got led Fader, who experienced her first panic attack at age 15, to invite others to share their own experiences with anxiety. "I wanted to feel less alone," said Fader.

The hundreds of tweets that followed are proof that Fader was certainly not alone. Below are 20 examples that capture the reality of living with anxiety.