I have a condition called Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or GAD. I am not an expert on mental health or mental illnesses, or even GAD in particular. I do know what it’s like for me. Sometimes it’s a constant nagging feeling that something is wrong, putting me in a fight-or-flight mode, even though logically I know everything is fine. Other times it’s a tightness in my chest that makes it hard to breathe. I tend to be more sensitive to stressors, and when someone around me is exhibiting some negative emotion, I soak it up like a sponge. It can exhaust me, physically and emotionally. Everyone feels anxiety. But not everyone has an anxiety disorder. For it to have that label, the anxiety has to be debilitating — it interferes with your daily life, inhibits your ability to live normally, sometimes making it incredibly difficult to accomplish simple tasks. There are all sorts of ways this can manifest. In high school, I would sit at my desk at home for hours trying to get assi...