This one has been around for far too long in my life. Anxiety seems like it is my friend, but it feels more like my foe. All it makes me want to do is say “Stop That!”.
Anxiety impacts many people in this world from all-out anxiety attacks to more subtle moments of holding someone back in life. It lurks around every corner, and some days it is on full display for all the world to see.
For a long time in my life, I did not even realize that I was anxious. It felt normal to me because that is all I knew in life. If you spoke about anxiety, I would not have had any idea what you were discussing. It was such a pattern with my life that it did not feel anything but normal.
When I first ended up in an emergency room, I had never heard the words, panic attack or anxiety. They were as foreign to me as speaking a second language. In fact, I remember the emergency room sending me home with a pamphlet about panic disorder. They told me to discuss it with my doctor.
Anxiety attacks would come on stronger and more challenging, leaving me to struggle to stand up and function. At the time, they hit me as hard as they could and sometimes, I would find that coworkers were carrying me home to rest and recover. I would soon see that anytime I went into a store, anxiety would be so intense that I would immediately need to leave.
It is a struggle dealing with this at times, and while I have learned many tools to help me, it still knocks me on my butt. No longer does it completely take me under, but it makes for some interesting moments in my day and life.
I wish I could once and for all tell anxiety to STOP IT and just never hear from it again. However, it still sneaks in the back door as if it is my friend. It will not listen to me when I tell it I no longer want it in my life.
Working with mind body healing and bodywork such as Unified Therapy has helped me tremendously to have a better handle on anxiety. If I go too long without getting work done on myself, it builds up, and then everything is difficult for me to manage. I have learned that anxiety is more than just what happens in my thoughts. It is what my body has stored in the cells that need to find an exit.
Even though I still struggle with it at times, it is nowhere near what it once was in my life. I no longer take daily medication for it, and I am much more in control of my life than I once was. The added tools in my healing toolbox have helped me so much to move past anxiety.
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