The Best Thing I Ever Learned About Anxiety

The best thing I ever learned about my anxiety may surprise you.  Truthfully, I was kind of surprised myself.  I wanted to share what I learned because I am hoping it can help some others who suffer, too.

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Just as a friendly reminder – I am NOT a doctor, nor a mental health professional.  All of this information is based on my own personal experiences.  You should always consult with a doctor before trying anything new.

A few months ago, I shared a post about my journey with anxiety (you can read about it here).  It was difficult for me to open up about that part of my life.  But since then, I have received a lot of positive support and feedback from people, which has been amazing.  And guess what I learned?!  I’m definitely not alone with my struggles. Whew!  Cue the sigh of relief 😊

Honestly, though, since one of my reasons for starting this blog was to reach out to other people about anxiety (and our daily struggles in general), it feels A-MAZ-ING to feel the love and support in return.  AMAZING.  The kind of feeling you get when something that you have worked so hard is finally starting to come together.  Ah, yes……it’s a beautiful thing.

Even though anxiety is something that I have dealt with for most of my life, it wasn’t until about 4 years ago that I decided to try talk therapy to see if it would help move me in a more positive direction.  My doctor recommended it and I figured it couldn’t hurt.   I found a therapist that I liked and went to talk to her numerous times over the course of about a year and a half.  I would have probably continued to see her for longer, but after a while, what it was costing me per session (even with insurance) was outweighing what I felt like I got out of it, so I decided to stop.

Talk therapy DID help me and I would recommend it to anyone that is unsure about the idea of going.  It feels really good to talk to someone (who you don’t personally know) about anything.  Even if you don’t have an underlying cause (anxiety, depression, etc.), therapy can help with just being better at handling life.  So many of us choose to hold a lot inside (ugh – why??).  Most likely because we are embarrassed to go and are worried what other people might think of us if they knew we went to see a therapist.

It was actually through therapy that I made one of the biggest revelations about my anxiety.

One of the things they talk about to ease anxiety is Cognitive Behavior Therapy.  Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is a fancy name for developing personal coping strategies to target solving your own personal current struggles.  It also helps to change unhelpful patterns in your thoughts and behaviors in order to better handle whatever you are going through.  Your thoughts, feelings and behaviors are all influenced by each other.  Makes sense, right?  How you think influences how you feel and then leads to how you behave.

Exaggerated or irrational thought patterns are more harmful than helpful and it is those types of negative thought patterns that feed into anxiety.  Anxiety LOVES all those negative, harmful thoughts going on in your head.  In fact, it doesn’t just love them, it THRIVES on them.  So, changing your thought process should change how you feel and then how you behave.  Since everyone is different (and have different things that trigger anxiety), the therapist assists you to set personal goals and practice effective strategies to decrease your negative thoughts, and hence, your anxiety symptoms.

Toward the end of one of my sessions, my therapist was talking to me about how I was going to work on steering my negative thoughts into more positive ones until the next time we met.  I don’t know what it was about that certain day or that particular session, but something clicked inside of me.  Literally a flip was switched inside of my head and I thought……

WAIT, YOU MEAN THIS ANXIETY THAT I HAVE BEEN DEALING WITH FOR YEARS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT IS JUST GOING TO GO AWAY??

Let me pause for just a second, because I know what you are probably thinking right now as you’re reading this.

How is this “revelation” that I had that day something positive?  How had I not realized this before?  There aren’t a whole lot of positive things that come along with having anxiety.  In fact, I can think of a much bigger list of negative things that come along with it.  So how was this a positive revelation?

But something incredibly powerful happened to me that day.

I realized that anxiety is a part of who I am (which is NOT a bad thing).  Anxiety does not just miraculously go away overnight.  It is NOT my fault.  It was never something that I asked to have and certainly wasn’t triggered by something I ever did wrong.  Most important, IT DOES NOT DEFINE WHO I AM AS A PERSON.

It is a part of me and I should EMBRACE, ACCEPT and LOVE myself and start treating myself with more KINDNESS.

You see, for so long I was FIGHTING the anxiety.  Being so hard on myself.  I would get angry for letting my anxious thoughts ruin my mood and take over how it made my body feel. I would talk down to myself. Tell myself I didn’t have the strength or energy to do things.  Such negative thoughts all the time.  Instead of taking control over those negative thoughts, I would let my anxious thoughts and fears of the future rule over me because that’s what I was so used to doing.  Sometimes with anxiety, you get so used to feeling and thinking the same way day after day that it becomes your normal way of life.

So I wondered what would happen if I would try to “make friends” with my anxiety instead of fight it?  Clearly, fighting it was only making things worse.  It took some time for me to realize how negative my thoughts were and how hard I always was on myself.

Here is something to think about.  You “talk” to yourself more than anyone else throughout the course of a day.  More than your spouse, more than your kids, more than your best friend, more than your co-workers.  I realized that if I talked to my friends the way I was talking to/treating myself, I would literally have no friends.  I would have ZERO friends.  Why would I ever treat all these amazing people in my life with overloads of kindness and not myself?  Seriously.  Reality check.

Here is what I did.

I started being kinder to myself (ditched the negative talk).

I did more things that I enjoy that took my mind off the anxiety, negative thoughts and fears of the future (hello, blogging 😊).

I gave myself more breaks (especially mom breaks) and didn’t feel guilty about it.

I started to pay attention to my breathing and slow my body down (I can’t control everything ALL the time).

I started to process what I was feeling instead of reacting quickly and negatively.

I realized that life does not always happen the way I once thought it would — and that’s okay!

I realized that some relationships and people I once had in my life were not people that were meant to stay with me on my entire journey — and that’s okay, too!

I learned to embrace exactly where I am at this point in my life.  Embrace the NOW.

I learned to cherish the present moment with my kids because once those years are gone, I cannot get them back.

Once I started doing all these things, I noticed a change in myself.  My anxiety took a backseat.  No, it didn’t disappear completely.  I still have to work at it and remind myself that it’s okay to slow down.  But I realized how much better my entire body felt when I stopped fighting the anxiety and was kinder to myself.

We are sometimes so busy with life; being moms, being daughters, being friends and co-workers.  We are so busy taking care of other people that we forget to treat ourselves with the same kindness, respect and forgiveness that we so freely give to others.  We deserve to do that for ourselves.

Take a deep breath……slow down……and be KIND to yourself.