After many years spent trying to grapple with my anxiety it has lead me to some sobering conclusions and realizations I'd like to share.
For one, I believed that if I fought hard enough, read more books and achieved some "super human" status of self-mastery over anxiety it would never come back to haunt me again. It was as if I believed I could become a "Jedi Master" of sorts and this anxiety thing would never win again. This striving and trying so hard was merely strengthening the wrong beliefs and mental patterns that caused my anxiety to begin with (!). It is the 'fighting against' and the 'struggling' or 'grappling' that only strengthened my fears. My false belief was that I had to first overcome anxiety with the same level of thinking that caused it. I had something to prove to myself and this pressure only made me feel like a candle burning at both ends. You just can't fight fire with fire and win. You can't overcome stress with more stress. I learned that letting go is a far better strategy - allowing things to be as they are is more effective. Somewhat 'making friends' with your anxiety is accepting it- that is the first step to overcoming it.
Another error was trying to attain perfection before I allowed myself to work on overcoming anxiety. I accumulated so many books and read so many things on the internet. I talked to people with anxiety and I kept notes beyond my daily journals to the point of exhaustion at times. My own anxiety was leading me around by the nose with the false belief that "I'd better know all there is to know - then I can allow myself to overcome my anxiety". This was putting the cart in front of the horse: You can't overcome anxiety by trying to be perfect. I was clearly avoiding the work it takes to overcome, reverse or replace the conditions of the anxiety using perfectionism as a tactic to believe I was 'doing something' while I was accomplishing next to nothing. It is frustrating to get your car wheels stuck in the mud. To move somewhere you have to get out of the mud and burn rubber. Changing the belief that 'something bad might happen to me if I work directly at this anxiety stuff' helped me loosen the death-grip and start taking those baby steps each day, taking better care of me in the process.
I also saw that there is no replacement for experience. I pursued a program of progressive exposure therapy with much success this past year. Many times I falsely concluded that I failed when I was unable to walk to the back of a store or drive to a part of town I'd long avoided. Yet, it was from these 'failures' when I learned the most. Over time and applied effort I was able to see more and more that my beliefs that something 'bad' could happen to me was merely a false notion, a form of self protection. Each time I ventured out and gained back lost ground it was like a bubble burst between what I imagined to be true versus what was true. I grew more as a doer with anxiety than an avoider with the same.
Another error was my addiction to my own thinking as being so important. A thought is 'just a thought' and nothing more. The more identified you are with your thoughts the more you believe you are your thoughts. Human beings are just that- human. And thinking is just something we know how to do. Taking your thoughts so seriously gets in the way as they can form beliefs and biochemical accompaniments that affect our experience. Anxiety feels so rotten and the more we fear the process the bigger the monster seems to grow. Truth: Anxiety is not a thing- it is the result of some bad habits originating in our thinking center. Imagine: I go to Wal Mart and run out suddenly because I was afraid the 'anxiety beast' was going to attack me on aisle 13. You look there and see no such beast. Yet, I ran away from 'it' for all the reasons I have for fearing it. In truth, I ran away from a set of thoughts that produced feelings. And to avoid those feelings I modified my behavior by escaping an area I deem as 'threatening' to my well being. I ran away from my own thoughts! How ludicrous! I'm not trying to minimize the effects anxiety can have for us. But what I am saying is that since anxiety is the result of our thoughts and a thought is just a thought we can entertain or discard, how important then is anxiety?
Getting a wedge of light between what anxiety is versus what we think it is starts a process of illumination as I like to think of it. I have reached a place today where inner peace and happiness is becoming more of a way of life and not an ideal to strive for. There is a lot of talk these days about taking a journey to enlightenment, revealing our true selves or 'awakening' to some special state of being that seems far off & distant. My perspective is that there is no journey: The path starts and ends with the real, genuine 'you' that you are. Unfortunately, we become so blocked by our false notions and beliefs we accept as true. We sell ourselves out because we're simultaneously buying into the falsities we allow to become part of our makeup.
I'll put my feelings this way: To get out of your own way and find peace of mind, keep it simple. Don't make the mistakes I made, don't fight anything, don't try to achieve some special state of being and don't beat yourself up about anything. Don't be afraid of your own fear!
Do treat yourself with the loving care you deserve, do take your anxiety with you into life and make friends with it. You might as well- you put it there! Do push out there and gain experience- nothing replaces that in the anxiety game. While you learn to allow your anxiety to just be, become adept at seeing the difference between the imagined and the real. Will going to the back of Wal Mart really hurt you? What is the worst that can happen? If so, then what? And then? So what? Once you're in the back of Wal Mart... now what? You are in the drivers seat at all times with this. You always get to choose. Don't let this thing get to you- you have everything inside that you need to get rid of the ball & chain of your anxious beliefs. Because they are just thoughts, and you can choose to think whatever you desire anytime, anywhere (including Wal mart). You can choose to not think of anything- it is your mind so own it.
And of course, all I've written of here is just a thought. Just my opinion. Thanks for reading!
Just a Thought...
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