They say everyone experiences some degree of anxiety, and what sets you apart as an anxiety disorder sufferer is how much it interferes with your life.
I’ve spent a few good weeks now working on my anxiety in a quiet way, in a private way. I’ve worked not through challenging myself in the obvious areas (go to the gym! Pick up a textbook!), instead strengthening one of my my support systems, the warm, soft cushion that keeps me safe in the roller coaster that is not just anxiety, but life as a whole.
What I mean is, my boyfriend came with me to therapy! (Thank you, boyfriend!)
Never in my life did I expect to ever date a guy brave enough to go to therapy with me! Boyfriend is absolutely one in seven billion!
It’s been bliss living in a fairy world with him, my kind and completely charming best friend, who somehow memorized everything he learned in that therapist’s office about my anxious heart. I may not be religious, but people like him bring to mind some big kind alien looking out for me. I hope to keep appreciating boyfriend, returning his love, and paying it forward.
Still, somehow, I am often afraid that cuddly time with boyfriend is.. a guilt-ridden waste of time. Don’t ask me how this is possible – an anxious mind can be an illogical mind!
Not that humans are or necessarily should be especially logical anyway! see:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-11/humans-cant-be-empathetic-and-logical-same-time
I am afraid many, many things I do are a waste of time. That if they make me especially happy, they will somehow rob me of my ability to handle the especially difficult troubles in life.
“Dark times lie ahead of us and there will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right.” Dumbledore said – and did he ever speak to my anxiety!
So, I? I should never choose easy, for it can never be right. With that in mind, boy, did the Dark Times come. Black or white. Easy or right. Choose. Choose and suffer. Feel pain to hopefully be right, be ashamed if you catch yourself in happiness. Choose!
I’ve thought this way for a very very long time, with no alternative in sight. I may change what I did on the outside, but this? This I held in my heart. This I still hold in my heart. But something else is inching its way in.
Today, another idea brightened me, shedding a warm light on everything. It is hard to say exactly where it started, though I’m sure it has to do with my family and my boyfriend’s love, the promise of upcoming adventure that motivates me like nothing else (Italia!), or some amazing books which I bought second hand, Walk Out Walk On by Meg Wheatley and Deborah Frieze as well as Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow by Elizabeth Lesser.
I’m no book critic, but in my humble opinion I recommend both for anyone needing a little hope, and I also recommend used bookstores everywhere that have shown me wisdom in their dusty shop windows and then practically given it away for free (which given the cost of therapy I’m sure we can all use, haha).I cannot say that everything I read in these books, or any books I read, spoke to me, but I will say this: Walk Out Walk On will give you hope that you are not a failure for living differently from how you expected, in a way that is truer and more beautiful to you.
When it comes to Broken Open, with its descriptions of the many losses in life that may allow you to grow and blossom, I personally read between the lines was that there is tremendous joy that I can appreciate when not in a crisis, that maybe I can “stop sleepwalking” now, and discover some of the important things in life before death and disaster uncover them for me.
Anxiety and the Girl 