I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which means my brain doesn’t know when to stress out about something and when not to. Two of my closest friends also have anxiety, and in a weird way I think it’s made us closer. The stress from our anxiety affects our minds and our bodies.

My anxiety is a little bit sporadic in how it manifests in my body. When I was in my senior year of high school, before I even knew I had anxiety, I got a case of Shingles. Yes, Shingles, the virus-induced rash that normally only affects old people. The only explanation- that my immune system was suppressed by stress, giving the virus free range to wreak havoc. I sometimes wonder why the doctor never investigated it further; maybe he thought all seniors are stressed enough to have a medical condition, or maybe he didn’t connect a mental illness to a physical one. I didn’t either.

One night my two friends were trading advice and complaints about our anxiety. The conversation came to how we get affected by stress, and where we hold it in our bodies. One friend says her back is contorted in all sorts of knots from stress. The second feels like she has to go to the bathroom all the time (even if she doesn’t) when she’s nervous. I mentioned that I tend to hold stress in my jaw, and they both yelled “Oh me too!” We talked like this for hours, finding commonalities and differences in our anxious bodies. In a weird way my friends and I felt more connected because of our bodies, and how anxiety warps and changes them. We share similar body stories, and maybe we’re closer because of that.