Hi! I'm currently attending a university and want my school work to be my main focus.

I haven't had any trouble in the past with difficulty with class material. I usually catch on to what's being taught pretty quick, and I love learning so much that I often study new skills related to my major. I'm well focused on my future.

However, I've had this terrible anxiety issue the last couple of years that's seriously affecting my work.

When I'm in class, I usually feel okay, but as the semester goes on, I feel very drained. It feels like a social anxiety, in a way. Going out and being surrounded by the other students seems to make me increasingly nervous. Some days I feel so awful that I feel very panicked and miss the class. I then send a message to my instructor that I missed the day and study the lecture notes, but then have an anxiety, albeit lesser, over missing the class, but I'm sure that's normal. Especially since I feel a lot of guilt for missing the class.

Missing classes doesn't usually affect my schoolwork, since I study well to make up for it and copy lecture notes from online or another student.

What is affecting me badly is that I have the same difficult anxiety doing my homework! I have a hard time fighting past it to start on homework. Sometimes I can't even bring myself to do my homework at all during the period I have to work on it. It must be strange for a teacher to see a list of well-graded homework (usually As) and a few 0s mixed in.

When I actually can fight past it and do the homework, I usually do well on it. So, I don't have a fear of understanding the material, I think.

I did very well in school growing up. I did happen to have parents who pushed for good grades, and chewed me out if I got bad ones.

I don't know what this anxiety is, but I used to get by with it. However, it's affecting me earlier and earlier in the semester as time goes on. Now, it's already affecting me!

It's a really awful anxiety. It prompted me to almost have a full-blown panic attack on the way to school once, but I managed to pull over and calm myself down since I didn't want that to happen while driving, for safety reasons.

Thanks for reading! Has anyone else had this? Advice would be appreciated.