I got a question about how my life changed when I got over my anxiety. As always, questions and comments are very welcome, so, here’s what changed for me:
Before I overcame my anxiety (with the help of a really skilled anxiety therapist) I had to try a lot harder in almost everything I did. I never could appreciate anything I did, and I always beat myself up over small things. I over analysed stuff and would find myself going back over conversations thinking I’d said the wrong thing or upset someone – even over trivial stuff. A constant feeling of ‘ugghh, this won’t work’ dogged my efforts. I avoided and postponed so much as I just felt bad about it. It was hard to enjoy anything as I was so distracted that my mind was never completely on what I was doing. I had bouts of depression, often quite bad and lasting weeks at a time before lifting, only to return again a few weeks later. And a big factor was that I only noticed the bad. I was always and only able to see how things would fail, would be bad, would hurt and so on. Now, I still got through life, but it was very tough. It was a struggle and I knew no other life, so I accepted it.
What’s different now?
Lots!
I just don’t do that stuff any more. I relax more, enjoy life more, I don’t waste time and energy worrying and over-analysing things, or suffer depression. The big thing however is that life got easier. I started to see the positive and the opportunities that I’d always thought were not there for me. Things just seem to fall into place more easily. That’s because when I was down, my mind was looking for what might go wrong or hurt me. Now that I’m not locked into that part of my brain, it can pattern match for success much more easily – just automatically seeing the potential now.
The changes I wanted in my life didn’t come from the things I thought would make a difference – new job, house, love, etc. They came from inside me, by dealing with the anxiety that I’d pretended wasn’t an issue for decades. Then the other things, the ‘success’ things, just happened as my mind was working in a better way to let me succeed. That’s the true advantage of not being anxious. It’s not going from feeling bad to feeling OK, it’s finding that you can progress to feeling great, wonderful, marvellous, excellent, and doing better than just OK!
It’s not the lightning flash and sudden changes that make the biggest difference, it’s finding that day by day things get easier.
Don’t just suffer on in silence. Things can change. Seek the right answers for you. Try! I spent decades thinking ‘That’s just the way it is’. I was so wrong. Make the most of your life. Start today.
Change is easier than you think.