By Laura Quero / Staff Writer

Anxiety is a feeling or emotion of continuous worry and fear which can appear in different situations. The daily life of a student in college can be really stressful and hard to handle, which can lead to episodes of anxiety or even to anxiety as a disorder itself.

Director of Campus Counseling Teresa Ceselski often talks to students about anxiety and gives advice to those who suffer from it.

“Some ideas to do when having anxiety or a panic attack is to slow your breathing down, distract yourself, go for a walk or exercise,” said Ceselski. “Spending too much time alone is never healthy.”

A key for anyone is to reach out to others when they are having a problem, she said.

“Talking to another person can help to lower anxiety and even help with finding some solutions to problems,” Ceselski said. “If you feel overwhelmed with anxiety, reach out for help, it can get better.”

At Missouri Valley College, a lot of students have suffered anxiety before or are currently suffering from it. Senior student-athlete Laura Castaño shared her story about dealing with anxiety and sent a message to anyone who is feeling the same way.

“I began to feel that my body was locked up and that I couldn’t breathe properly,” said Castaño. “My hands were sweaty and I didn’t know what to do.”

Castaño said sometimes the issue is that we are too close to our problems and don’t have the proper perspective.

“Sometimes you have to look at things from a different perspective, anxiety is one more feeling that our body is getting to know,” she said. “Anxiety is a challenge for our lives, not something bad that is happening to us.”

Many students don’t really know about anxiety disorder. They suffer it alone and without any knowledge about it, which makes it even worse. Teaching at schools from an early age that anxiety exists and that is not necessarily something negative, would help a lot of kids in their future lives.

A former MVC student from Colombia, Valentina Cardoso, graduated with a bachelor’s of science in psychology. She talks about the anxiety around campus and how psychology can help with that.

“From my perspective, now that I have been involved in the study of psychology for 5 years, my life has changed tremendously on how I treat myself, how I perceive others, and how important is to work on yourself not only physically but mentally and emotionally,” said Cardoso. “I have known a lot of students here that have anxiety, it is difficult whenever they are presenting episodes of anxiety and there is nobody around to really help them.”

Cardoso said one reason that students might not seek help is that they are unaware culturally that they should.

“Nobody has taught them that anxiety occurs to everyone at some point in life, and here at MVC there are so many people from different cultural backgrounds that not having enough mental health resources available to them on campus is detrimental for their emotional, psychological, and physical well-being,” she said.