“My Journey with Anxiety”
Paige’s Story
For as long as I can remember, anxiety has been a part of my life. Intense feelings of worry and fear would unexpectedly creep up on me with a cocktail of overwhelming physical and psychological responses. Worrying that something bad and catastrophic would happen, even if I didn’t have any reasons to worry. My head felt like it was always on the play button running a million miles an hour with racing worried and fear-based thoughts, which felt exhausting. I remember feeling intense waves of nausea, my heart would pound out of my chest, and sometimes it was hard to catch my breathe. These physical feelings led me to many doctors’ appointments, therapy sessions, sometimes missed school, and one time- the emergency. I felt as if I was “stuck” and couldn’t escape something that felt so out of my control.
As I grew into my teenage and early adult years, anxiety felt like it consumed me. I remember thinking, “this is becoming normal for me”, as I didn’t really know what “normal” felt like. My relationship with anxiety was not the healthiest. I let anxiety run my life, my decisions, and I started to identify with anxiety and let it define me as a person. I remember at times crying and praying it would one day “disappear” so I knew what “normal” felt like. I hated my anxiety to say the least. Anxiety still lives with me today, it still hangs out with me time to time, and can sometimes overwhelm me with intense thoughts and physical feelings. However, my relationship with anxiety has changed.
Over the years through seeking support, I have learned that anxiety is just an emotion like any other emotion and my thoughts are just thoughts. I have learned that I don’t have to let my thoughts and emotions control me, define me, and I am more in control of my thoughts and emotions than I ever thought I was. I realized there is no such thing as “normal”, and that we are all human having real and raw human experiences, and this just happens to be mine.
Re-authoring and re-wiring new narratives and responses has taken time and practice, but I have noticed the benefits of it over time. Today, I see anxiety as a part of me that I am experiencing, it is not all of me and doesn’t define me as a person. I will always live with anxiety but have learned better tools on how to navigate it when it comes up; ways to name my anxiety, validate that’s it’s okay to feel what I am feeling, give myself self-compassion, affirm I am not my thoughts and feelings, and self soothe through ways I talk to myself and things I can do.
Anxiety has been a teacher and has guided me to deeper insight into understanding who I am as a person. Anxiety has taught me that you can re-write and re-author new narratives, that your mindset is re-adaptable, that your brain is a muscle you can flex and build into how you want to train your mindset to be each moment, that you don’t have to let anxiety run your life, that you can have a healthy relationship with anxiety. My relationship with anxiety has evolved into a team and partnership with each other- knowing it does have its purpose when needed and keeps me safe and protects me when appropriate, but also knowing I am in control of it when it is not needed. We work together as a team, and anxiety will be along with me through my journey in life.
If you are experiencing overwhelming anxiety- I hear you, I get you, I understand you. You are not alone. But know that you are not anxiety, it’s just something you are experiencing, and it does not define you. You are more in control of your thoughts and emotions that you may think you are. Hopefully my story will offer some hope with the anxiety you may be navigating.
Paige
