All your life the plan was to be a doctor. You were told this would happen, started to believe this would happen, and talked about it with family and friends.
In fact, you took classes towards this goal in high school. Interestingly, it was a big stretch to try and understand the material or even show interest.
But this did not deter you because this was the arrangement you made with life. Once in college, you declared yourself pre-med and took classes that led to this goal.
The challenges you found when trying to study let alone read the material were very discouraging. So was the embarrassment you felt in class when you were called on for a simple question, but were asleep and had no clue what the answer was.
Report cards came and you did the worst in science and math class. The pressure was already set and now you started to feel that you could not meet the expectation.
There had to be another way, otherwise you would let down your family and they would no longer accept/love you. You changed schools and to take a different approach to medicine.
Again, you are failing and can’t seem to grasp the concepts that come so easily to others in the same major. You feel like a failure and if you continue down this path, you will never succeed as a doctor.
In addition, your confidence to perform in front of people has diminished. You start to panic; breathing heavily, trembling, and have numerous irrational thoughts. You go down that dark path that is extremely lonely.
All of a sudden, you pop! You start crying uncontrollably and slurring your words when asked what’s wrong. You are pacing in the bathroom, hitting the doors, and you feel like you are going crazy. You even think about suicide.
You have just walked down the path of experiencing general anxiety to a full blown panic attack.