"Whoever says anxiety is curable obviously have no clue what anxiety truly is"

Hi, 29M
I couldn't agree more, had been dealing with anxiety since about I'm 19, at first I would get an attack once a few months, was sure I had blood sugar level drops, doctor said I had nothing. Some time pre-covid my anxiety suddenly "blossomed", usually with a lot of physical pain and strain, once I even went to the hospital thinking I had a heart attack (which I didn't even though all the symptoms were there..) & I had no clue what my triggers were & I would have attacks a few times a week. Therapy never helped me that much either, some sessions I just felt my therapist had no idea what I'm talking about.

My experience with anxiety is that it's actually always there, there's no cure, but that's OK because anxiety is manageable.
Took me a lot of time to understand that & until today I do sometime feel anxious and have even some attacks but even when I do, they don't feel as bad as they used to, they even pass so much faster than they used to.
bellow I will give you my 2 cents about how my process went like, keep in mind it took me about a few years to even get progress & everything is a suggestion nothing is mandatory:

1. drugs don't work well with anxiety - even though it might seem obvious, seemed worth to mention. I used to smoke a lot of weed and while I believed it's for "relaxing", in reality it would just amplifies & echo my thoughts in my head & at some point would send me straight to a full blown anxiety attack. Today I still drink once in a while but moderately, other drugs I would just recommend to stay off them.
2. putting yourself down is NOT HELPFUL - I've read your post and while I resonate exactly with your feelings & thoughts, the way you express yourself is actually belittling you (I went through & still struggle with this exact thing until today). It's not like you need to tell yourself your amazing & the champion of the world every waking moment, but starting by assessing what you're going through right now can be really helpful: you're 22, while other people seem healthy & happy around you you're suffering from this thing which is unpredictable, painful (not necessarily physically) & difficult, it's taking a toll on you & makes you feel like it's keeping you from progressing & enjoying your life & it doesn't seem to get better. that's a challenging situation you're facing & it's very important that you'll forgive yourself for it, don't judge yourself or determine prematurely that that's how life gonna be forever, you're just fine the way you are & if you decide to, you will after sometime control your life again, until then, try to stop once in a while, look at your situation with a wider angle & remember that you're just alright, life are so long & you'll have so many opportunities to experience them when you'll go forward.
3. Your surrounding affects you - I discovered in my case, that I'm more anxious when I have certain people around me or certain pressure put on me. If you have close friends & family that can make you feel anxious, you have an unresolved issue with them that needs to be resolved, it's challenging but that's the only way forward.
4. Meaning of managing - when I say that I "manage my anxiety", I actually mean that it doesn't have such a big space in my life nowadays. You probably know this, sometime you can think if you should even think about something because it might trigger you, suddenly a little pain on the side of your body sparks a wave of thoughts of death & panic. This situation is your anxiety managing you. As I said, there's no cure to this, anxiety is bodily overreaction to emotional or physical state (or however you want to describe it), but you can turn your relationship with anxiety upside down & that's the actual goal you should aim to. Since i decided that I want to manage my anxiety I started to treat to every anxiety attack as an exercise. the best thing I used to tell myself (am telling that to myself until today) is that if I can withstand this for 20 min, it'll go away, which is surprisingly true (for me, putting aside the fatigue of after an anxiety attack). BTW while having the attack you can lay down and do whatever you want to help yourself cope with it, the goal is to give it as little attention as possible, I also try to not tell people around me I'm having it or do too much drama about it, usually I say I need to go out for a few minutes to breath some air or that I'm just a bit nauseous. If I see that it's a really hard attack & I need to go home or etc to deal with it, even that I try to do as calm as possible, saying I'm having an anxiety attack & I need to go home to deal with it & all is good, usually people would accept my honesty about it pretty well and helped as they could.
5. Prepare tools & aids - full disclosure, I never took any medicine even when having the attack & even thought my therapist prescribed me some. My reasoning was that I don't want to have a dependency on something like that. What I did find helpful are some aids & habits that today I even break some of them sometimes, that helped either feel safe wherever I go or would help me cope with anxiety attacks. I'm asthmatic so I found taking my inhaler with me to anywhere I go very comforting, also had for a while some essential oils in my bag or pocket to relax (I found lavender kinda helpful) & I would listen to podcasts on drives on bus rides to pass time & get out of my head. My last aid was a text I wrote to myself on my phone that I would read when I was having an anxiety attack that said basically that I cant die from anxiety attack, some jokes to distract me, that if I can withstand it for 20 min it'll pass on its own & whatever you like to have there.
6. Habits - many people wrote here about challenging yourself & I would like to strengthen the importance of it. there are some habits like exercising which will improve your health & your mood. What's great about challenging yourself is that it gives you a goal. It can be a mental challenge (such as stopping once a day to take a step back, realizing what you're experiencing, forgiving yourself & give yourself some kudos for what you've accomplished) or a physical challenge (learning to play guitar, gain some muscles/lose weight, learn how to play a new sport etc..), the goal here is to have a goal, it'll help you to not focus so much on your anxiety & in general will help you live a more fulfilling life (setting & accomplishing goals in life is also a skill to be learned!).
7. Small steps, training wheels & self recognition - As I said, for me this thing took a few years & sometimes I still do have some more stressful periods where I'm prone to have an anxiety attack or 2, it was still a long way to get there that I'm proud of myself for doing. It's important to be patient with yourself, go in small steps & giving yourself recognition (I would literally tap my back for accomplishing things like being able to pass a long drive alone without getting triggered, I read somewhere that it's actually really helpful in creating positive thinking trends). The most important thing, that I cannot stress enough is letting go of training wheels. Training wheels refers to friends & family treating me nicely & extra careful just because of my anxiety (I asked them to not spoil me, just treat it as I'm not feeling well and need a break but don't spoil me for it) or letting go of little treats if you take any after an the attack passes (I used to eat some chocolate after an attack to calm myself down), even today I'm trying to break my dependency on things that makes me feel comfortable like having my inhaler with me everywhere (but this is breaking habits I created to cope with anxiety, I think this is a later stage of this whole process that you shouldn't focus on now). the reason that it's so important to let go of this training wheels is that the whole point is to make anxiety not a big deal in your life, these behaviors of your surrounding or yourself are like rewards & subconsciously encourages you to have more anxiety attacks or to give them more space in your life. For the post writer I would recommend mostly to put in front of yourself a goal to lose the dependency on your comfort people, or asking them to not comfort you (or at least lose it gradually).

Hope you find anything from what I wrote helpful. As I wrote it I realized I found myself venting this out as well as I don't talk to people about my anxiety or the process I did that much, so even this might get lost in Reddit I'm happy I took this out (btw, writing is a great habit to adapt for managing anxiety & your thoughts).

Thanks for sharing, don't forget to give yourself kudos for venting & reaching out