Changing something that isn't edible for something that is edible is always good, because it lowers anxiety and there's less risk of you getting sick.

It takes willpower to change your behavior, anxiety lowers willpower. So it makes sense that you have more anxiety and eat more of it.

Swapping it for something that's edible will change that, there's no need to be anxious about it.

Beyond that, you have to lower your anxiety, then you have more willpower.

I can tell you how to do that. You should also get a multivitamin and iron supplements. That way if that's causing it, that will also take away your desire to eat graphite.

It's probably a good idea to bring this up with your school counselor. Parents often don't understand, but school counselors are trained and they know all about pica, so they won't judge you for it, more likely they'll just shrug and then try to help you.

Here are a few things that you can do to help you with anxiety. It comes down to meditation, breathing exercises and using apps to reduce your anxiety.

You can double check if it is indeed anxiety here: 11 Signs and Symptoms of Anxiety Disorders

If you feel anxious right now, open this image in a new tab and start breathing in and out in the rhythm of the image.

If you currently consume a lot of caffeine (in coffee or soft drinks), stop that. Caffeine is known to cause anxiety

The best and quickest way to deal with anxiety, is to face your fear if possible.

If you always avoid situations that scare you, you might stop doing things you want or need to do. You won't be able to test out whether the situation is always as bad as you expect, so you miss the chance to work out how to manage your fears and reduce your anxiety. Anxiety problems tend to increase if you get into this pattern. Exposing yourself to your fears can be an effective way of overcoming this anxiety.

The experience of anxiety involves nervous system arousal. If your nervous system is not aroused, you cannot experience anxiety. Understandably, but unfortunately, most people attempt to cope with feelings of anxiety by avoiding situations or objects that cause the feelings. Avoidance, however, prevents your nervous system from getting used to it. So avoidance guarantees that the feared object or situation will remain new, and hence arousing, and hence anxiety provoking. Even worse, avoidance will generalize over time. If you avoid the elevator at work, you will soon begin to avoid all elevators, and then all buildings that house elevators. Soon enough, you'll be living in a prison of avoidance.

If your anxiety is situational and not too extreme, you can try to address it through exposure therapy. You slowly expose yourself to situations that you know gives you fear. Here are two easy to follow guides on that. The one regarding spiders, is a blue print, you can replace spider with anything, fear of driving, fear of using a phone, anything.

• How to Overcome the Fear of Spiders (wikihow)
• How to Overcome Fear (wikihow)

Overthinking:

• How to know/what to do: Overthinking
• Intrusive Thoughts and Overthinking: The Skill of Cognitive Defusion (youtube, 1.2M views)

For all of the below advice, use technology to your advantage. Take your phone and set repeating alarms, with labels of what to do. Train yourself to either snooze or reschedule the reminders if you can't take action right away, but never to ignore them. The intention is to condition yourself, to build habits, so you will start healing yourself without having to think about it.

• Sleep: Good sleep is very important when treating anxiety When you have days where you don't have to do anything, don't oversleep, set an alarm clock. You really don't need more than 7 hours at most per night (a little more if you are under 18). If you can't fall sleep, try taking melatonin one hour before going to bed. It's cheap, OTC and is scientifically proven to help regulate your sleep pattern. Also, rule out sleep apnea. Up to 6% of people have this, but not everyone knows. If you find yourself often awake at night, start counting. Don't grab your phone, don't look at the clock, don't do anything interesting. We're trying to bore you to sleep, not keep you entertained - sometimes it might feel like you've done it for hours and hours, but often it's really not all that long. Anytime your mind wanders away from the numbers and starts thinking, start over at 1. count at the speed of either your heartbeat or your breathing, whatever you prefer. Then both Alexa and Google Home can also play a range of sleep sounds if you ask them (rain or other white noise) and there are also free apps for both Android and Apple devices.
• Meditate: Anxiety can be reduced with meditation. 10 minute meditation for anxiety (youtube). Your attention is like a muscle. The more you train it, the better the control you have over it. Mindfulness training will help you gain better control over your mind. It doesn't take much effort, just 15 to 20 minutes a day of doing nothing but focus your attention is enough and is scientifically proven to work. As you become better at focusing your attention, it will become easier to force yourself to stop having negative thoughts, which will break the negative reinforcement cycle. Go here if you have specific questions: /r/Meditation
• Exercise: The effect of exercise on anxiety If you have access to a gym, then start lifting weights. If you don't have access to a gym (or you don't like lifting), start running. If you can't run, then start walking. Just start small. 10 minutes three times a week is fine. You don't have to run fast, just run and then slowly build it up over time. Exercising does several things: It releases endorphins, it takes your mind of your negative thoughts and it will improve your overall health.
• Give lots of hugs: Hugs release oxytocin, which improves your mood and relaxes you. So find people to hug. If you are single, hug your parents or friends. If you can't, see if a dog is an option. Most dogs love to hug. Another solution that provides the same benefit is a weighted blanket will provide a similar positive effect at night. You should try to aim for 12 hugs a day (if you currently don't hug a lot, I suggest you slowly build it up over time).

There are a large number of books that are aimed at helping you, these are the most popular ones:

• The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook (4.6 stars, 1200+ ratings)
• Dare: The New Way to End Anxiety and Stop Panic Attacks (4.7 stars, 1600+ ratings)
• Badass Ways to End Anxiety & Stop Panic Attacks! - A counterintuitive approach to recover and regain control of your life.: Die-Hard and Science-Based ... recover from Anxiety and Stop Panic Attacks (4.7 stars, 400+ ratings)

Be aware that anxiety can be addictive:

I've seen that many people are addicted to the adrenaline rush of anxiety, known as "the fight or flight response" and don't know how to diffuse it.

Frequent consumpton of news (current events) can increase anxiety.

Phone apps that will help you:

• FearTools - Anxiety Aid
• Calm - Meditate, Sleep, Relax

Here are instructions on when and how to get professional help: /r/Anxiety/wiki/gettinghelp

Anxiety self help by the Australian Health Service. Worry and Rumination Workbook

Best Videos:

• Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) - causes, symptoms & treatment (1.2M views)

(cont.)

Here's what to do if you have self esteem issues:

The first step would be to try and confirm that, so we know if you should take a closer look or not. One of the most commonly tools used to asses your self esteem is called the "Rosenberg self-esteem scale". This test will take less than 5 minutes and will immediately give you the results. You should answer quickly and without overthinking the answers. If you scored above 15, then you likely don't have self esteem issues and you can probably disregard the rest of this answer. If you scored below 15 or you already know for sure you have self esteem issues, keep reading.

If you are not sure if you really have self esteem issues, then here's a page of 10 warning signs that you have low self esteem. Read it and you can confirm yourself if the below advice applies to you or not.

What is self esteem?

self-esteem is the overall sense or feeling you have about your own self-worth or self-value.

Causes of Low Self-Esteem:

• An Unhappy Childhood
• Traumatic Experiences
• Experiences of Failure
• Negative Self-Talk

Here is a short overview of how to improve your self esteem:

1. Identify and challenge your negative beliefs.
   • Notice when you are thinking negative things about yourself. And ask yourself, is it really that bad? More than likely you are exaggerating the issue, which just pulls yourself down.
   • Get in the habit of stopping yourself when all you do is think negatively about yourself.
2. Identify the positive things about yourself.
   • Thinking positively about yourself is a big part of improving your self esteem. Occasionally just pause and think about all the positive attributes you have. you could also set a repeating alarm on your phone and do this once a week for a few minutes.
3. Build positive relationships and avoid negative ones.
   • If someone makes you feel bad, it might be time to leave them behind or avoid being around them.
4. Don't be too hard on yourself.
   • Life's really hard. For you, for me, for everyone. You shouldn't totally let yourself off the hook, but you can't be constantly trashing yourself either. It needs to be balanced.
5. Learn to stand up for yourself.
   • You have to increase your assertiveness. If that is a problem you deal with, let me know and I will give you separate advice for that.
6. Challenge yourself.
   • If you always avoid testing yourself and proofing that you can do complicated things, you'll just end up with a self esteem that's worse and worse. Pick the right challenge. It's alright if it's hard, but it shouldn't be impossible.
7. See yourself how others see you
   • Take a moment to think how other people view you. What do they notice? What do they love about you? What do they see in you?
8. Do your best
   • To really improve your self esteem, you're going to have to try. And that can be hard, especially if you're dealing with other issues (so don't forget, don't be too hard on yourself - but still put in the effort). You're going to need to convince yourself, that you're really not all that bad. And you can't do that, unless you try. And I mean really try.
   • Finding a meaning in life can help (and I can give you advice for that, if you currently lack a goal in life).
   • Motivational techiques and goals can help (and I can give you advice for that as well).

Additional self esteem improvement tips:

• Sleep: How Sleep Impacts Your Self-Esteem, a second source: How to Boost Your Self-esteem by Sleeping More. If you can't fall sleep, try taking melatonin one hour before going to bed. It's cheap, OTC and is scientifically proven to help regulate your sleep pattern. Also, rule out sleep apnea. Up to 6% of people have this, but not everyone knows. If you find yourself often awake at night, start counting. Don't grab your phone, don't look at the clock, don't do anything interesting. We're trying to bore you to sleep, not keep you entertained - sometimes it might feel like you've done it for hours and hours, but often it's really not all that long. Anytime your mind wanders away from the numbers and starts thinking, start over at 1. count at the speed of either your heartbeat or your breathing, whatever you prefer. If that still doesn't work and you really want to sleep, buy a dodow

• Exercise: Self Esteem and exercise, a second source: How Does Exercise Affect Your Self-Esteem? If you have access to a gym, then start lifting weights. If you don't have access to a gym (or you don't like lifting), start running. If you can't run, then start walking. Just start small. 10 minutes three times a week is fine. You don't have to run fast, just run and then slowly build it up over time.

• Apps: Here are the most popular free apps for self esteem improvement: "Six Pillars - Build a Healthy Self-Esteem" (4.5 star, 230+ reviews) and "#SelfLove (GG Confidence & Self esteem)" (4.0 star, 600+ reviews)

There exist a large amount of self help articles out there, but many will try to sell you their self help books. Here are a few that don't do that:

• A psychologist with 20 years of experience says there are 5 simple ways to improve your self-esteem
• 8 Steps to Improving Your Self-Esteem
• 18 Self-Esteem Worksheets and Activities for Teens and Adults (+PDFs)

Here is some information on what causes self esteem issues, in case you're wondering how you ended up with it.

The most popular videos on improving your self esteem:

• Self Esteem - Understanding & Fixing Low Self-Esteem
• How to Build Self-Esteem - The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden

These are the most popular books to improve your self esteem:

• The Self-Esteem Workbook (4.6 star, 1000+ reviews - Highly recommended!)
• Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem (4.6 star, 600+ reviews)

Finally, there are two subreddits that you can join and where you can ask specific questions to people that have faced the same problems you are facing today:

• /r/selfesteem/
• /r/confidence/ (active community specifically focused on boosting your confidence)

If you can't improve your self esteem after a few months, consider going to a therapist.

God I hate myself for being a media consumer music, movies all of it.

Here's what to do if you have self esteem issues:

The first step would be to try and confirm that, so we know if you should take a closer look or not. One of the most commonly tools used to asses your self esteem is called the "Rosenberg self-esteem scale". This test will take less than 5 minutes and will immediately give you the results. You should answer quickly and without overthinking the answers. If you scored above 15, then you likely don't have self esteem issues and you can probably disregard the rest of this answer. If you scored below 15 or you already know for sure you have self esteem issues, keep reading.

If you are not sure if you really have self esteem issues, then here's a page of 10 warning signs that you have low self esteem. Read it and you can confirm yourself if the below advice applies to you or not.

What is self esteem?

self-esteem is the overall sense or feeling you have about your own self-worth or self-value.

Causes of Low Self-Esteem:

• An Unhappy Childhood
• Traumatic Experiences
• Experiences of Failure
• Negative Self-Talk

Here is a short overview of how to improve your self esteem:

1. Identify and challenge your negative beliefs.
   • Notice when you are thinking negative things about yourself. And ask yourself, is it really that bad? More than likely you are exaggerating the issue, which just pulls yourself down.
   • Get in the habit of stopping yourself when all you do is think negatively about yourself.
2. Identify the positive things about yourself.
   • Thinking positively about yourself is a big part of improving your self esteem. Occasionally just pause and think about all the positive attributes you have. you could also set a repeating alarm on your phone and do this once a week for a few minutes.
3. Build positive relationships and avoid negative ones.
   • If someone makes you feel bad, it might be time to leave them behind or avoid being around them.
4. Don't be too hard on yourself.
   • Life's really hard. For you, for me, for everyone. You shouldn't totally let yourself off the hook, but you can't be constantly trashing yourself either. It needs to be balanced.
5. Learn to stand up for yourself.
   • You have to increase your assertiveness. If that is a problem you deal with, let me know and I will give you separate advice for that.
6. Challenge yourself.
   • If you always avoid testing yourself and proofing that you can do complicated things, you'll just end up with a self esteem that's worse and worse. Pick the right challenge. It's alright if it's hard, but it shouldn't be impossible.
7. See yourself how others see you
   • Take a moment to think how other people view you. What do they notice? What do they love about you? What do they see in you?
8. Do your best
   • To really improve your self esteem, you're going to have to try. And that can be hard, especially if you're dealing with other issues (so don't forget, don't be too hard on yourself - but still put in the effort). You're going to need to convince yourself, that you're really not all that bad. And you can't do that, unless you try. And I mean really try.
   • Finding a meaning in life can help (and I can give you advice for that, if you currently lack a goal in life).
   • Motivational techiques and goals can help (and I can give you advice for that as well).

Additional self esteem improvement tips:

• Sleep: How Sleep Impacts Your Self-Esteem, a second source: How to Boost Your Self-esteem by Sleeping More. If you can't fall sleep, try taking melatonin one hour before going to bed. It's cheap, OTC and is scientifically proven to help regulate your sleep pattern. Also, rule out sleep apnea. Up to 6% of people have this, but not everyone knows. If you find yourself often awake at night, start counting. Don't grab your phone, don't look at the clock, don't do anything interesting. We're trying to bore you to sleep, not keep you entertained - sometimes it might feel like you've done it for hours and hours, but often it's really not all that long. Anytime your mind wanders away from the numbers and starts thinking, start over at 1. count at the speed of either your heartbeat or your breathing, whatever you prefer. If that still doesn't work and you really want to sleep, buy a dodow

• Exercise: Self Esteem and exercise, a second source: How Does Exercise Affect Your Self-Esteem? If you have access to a gym, then start lifting weights. If you don't have access to a gym (or you don't like lifting), start running. If you can't run, then start walking. Just start small. 10 minutes three times a week is fine. You don't have to run fast, just run and then slowly build it up over time.

• Apps: Here are the most popular free apps: "Six Pillars - Build a Healthy Self-Esteem" (4.5 star, 230+ reviews) and "#SelfLove (GG Confidence & Self esteem)" (4.0 star, 600+ reviews)

Online Resources:

• Free workbook and information from the Australian Health Service
• A psychologist with 20 years of experience says there are 5 simple ways to improve your self-esteem
• 8 Steps to Improving Your Self-Esteem
• 18 Self-Esteem Worksheets and Activities for Teens and Adults (+PDFs)

Here is some information on what causes self esteem issues, in case you're wondering how you ended up with it.

The most popular videos on improving your self esteem:

• Self Esteem - Understanding & Fixing Low Self-Esteem
• How to Build Self-Esteem - The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden

These are the most popular books to improve your self esteem:

• The Self-Esteem Workbook (4.6 star, 1000+ reviews - Highly recommended!)
• Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem (4.6 star, 600+ reviews)

Finally, there are two subreddits that you can join and where you can ask specific questions to people that have faced the same problems you are facing today:

• /r/selfesteem/
• /r/confidence/ (active community specifically focused on boosting your confidence)

Low self esteem often causes depression. So it would be a good idea to rule that out as well. Here's a simple test that will help you determine if that's has happened to you (you get the answer directly, takes less than 2 minutes. You can skip the demographic part). Let me know if you scored over 10 on this test and I'll give you advice on how to combat your depression as well.

Self esteem issues can cause anxiety issues. Here's a two minute test for anxiety you can take that will give us an idea roughly how anxious you are. Let me know if you scored over 45.

Self esteem problems can cause social anxiety issues.

Here's a two minute test for social anxiety to check if you have social anxiety issues and not something else (results will be visible right away). Let me know if you scored over 50.

If you can't improve your self esteem after a few months, consider going to a therapist.