Thinking Beyond Anxiety

Many of us get beat down with anxiety in life. And when we do, it often becomes part of our identity. When it spirals, everything becomes anxiety — it becomes your identity.

"I can't do anything. Anxiety won't let me" are the words uttered by so many suffering from debilitating anxiety. And for a good reason: Anxiety is a bastard — a bastard that can have a full grasp on you until you learn how to manage it.

Once you give your identity to anxiety, your anxiety will hold onto it for dear life making it — at times — seem impossible to break free. To counter this, you must begin to look and think beyond your anxiety because the longer you let it control you, the more control it will have over you.

Too many spend their energy learning everything there is to know about anxiety without actually facing it and doing something to change the reality. It's avoidance. It's easy to trick yourself into believing you're being pro-active by gaining lots of knowledge on the subject. But all that knowledge is useless unless you act on it.

Dealing with anxiety is simple in theory. The reality, on the other hand? Well, that's a cluster fuck if ever there was one, which is why avoidance and comfort are, more often than not, the preferred option. Saves you from having to deal with your shit.

If you can weather a little more turbulence — which you're already accustomed to — and face up to this bastard, you will undoubtedly find yourself faced with a far better reality.

You don't need to fix your anxiety. It's your lifestyle that likely needs adjusting. The majority of the work required goes beyond your anxiety. Waiting to take action until you understand every intricacy of it will only make it harder.

Of course, you want to avoid it. To run and hide. What you're going through is living hell. But hell, unfortunately, can get worse. Many who suffer wait until they reach the pits of hell before definitively deciding to do something about it. To truly accept it. This can often take ten years or longer.

It doesn't have to be the case. Nor should it be the case. But it is what it is. You call the shots for your own destiny.

To get out of it, you have to look beyond it. Anxiety is rarely the problem. It's the symptom. A horrible one. But a symptom nonetheless. Seek out the problem, and you can get to work on alleviating the symptom. And prepare to get real honest with yourself. It’ll be worth it. My God, it will be so worth it.

The end.