Are you Someone who Dreads Big Events?

With graduation from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill right around the corner, I have been feeling a mixture of emotions, one which being anxious. I am anxious because I dread big events. This may sound weird to some people because isn’t that what people look forward to their entire life? These big milestone events that are supposed to define your life and stick with you forever? For me, I think when I say dread I mean anticipation. I think I build up events in my head, how they are supposed to lay out, and how I am supposed to feel when they are happening. I think to myself, what if I don’t get the perfect picture, or the event doesn’t go as planned, or the fear of getting disappointed in the moment because it is not everything I had dreamt it up to be. I think that I anticipate how monumental events are supposed to go and stress myself out up until the moment they are happening.

More often than not, once the big event such as getting your braces off, getting your driver’s license, voting for the first time, high school graduation and your 21st birthday begins I become less stressed because I realize that everything is going to be okay and I just have to accept whatever the event turns out to be. Similar to events, I am the little kid who would ball crying seeing the needle and anticipating how bad the shot will be, but once I got the shot I stopped crying and realized it wasn’t so bad afterall. In short, this is how I feel about events. I have tried to change this part of me, but as much as I try I still struggle with over analyzing these types of events in my head and expecting too much out of these moments. My mom referred to me as “A moments person,” meaning that I really value moments in life especially big ones and how they make me feel. I think this is spot on and I will continue to work on not over-expecting things from my family or friends during these big events. For example, my goal for graduation this year is to enjoy every minute of it and to not expect it to go perfectly. I think this will be easier for me to achieve because this year has already been so different that it has lowered my anxiety because I can’t expect it to go perfect or the life it has been in the past. Therefore, I think that as long as I take this graduation for what it is and take the pressure off of myself and just enjoy every minute of it I know I will have an amazing graduation experience.