How I was taught to have and live with anxiety

For me, anxiety has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. These days while I am on my journey to obtain internal healing I am confronted with imagery, snap shots and even movies of different experiences that I've had that has single handedly shaped anxiety to be what it is in my life. With all things there is a root. A beginning. A starting point. An introductory point. Pre-vision if you will. I remember when I was around 3 or 4 years old being in an environment that was not necessarily safe for kids to grow up in and I remember being in bed at night with the lights being off and my room being completely dark. Even in darkness I could see a dark figure with a brimmed hat on approaching me. Fear paralyzed my body as my breathing became more rapid and tears filled my eyes. I don't remember what happened after that, but to this day I remember the feeling of fear,uncertainty, hopelessness, confusion and not being able to breathe. Needless to say, I have felt those same feelings throughout my childhood and it has followed me all the way into adulthood.

If anxiety isn't confronted in its beginning stages it can literally take on a life of its own. READ that sentence again. Myself and countless others have experienced life through the lenses of anxiety. Not through our own eyes or perceptions. It literally acts to suffocate you, stop you from progressing forward in things you truly desire to do. Your actual mind and the mind of anxiety is always at war with each other and its exhausting and can be downright debilitating. You are presented with a trigger within a life scenario, after all life happens and we cannot always avoid, stop or control the nature of how things present themselves right? But anxiety likes to take those triggers and intensify them so greatly that it cripples you. it begins to create different case scenarios that further feed the anxiety and fear ( the two are joined at the hip) and you find yourself stuck and unable to move mentally, emotionally and sometimes physically.

After a recent health scare, I asked myself who I was apart from anxiety. Am I truly living if anxiety and fear controlled my every move, decision and thought. What is my desire for perfection derive from. Why do I have to have a plan A-D. Why do I need to have control over certain things in order to proceed forward. Let me make it clear, these things aren't necessarily wrong but if they are rooted in something that is or have the potential to be harmful to you then it is best to confront those things from an honest and raw place! This is a small glimpse of my journey of living with anxiety. I am on medication to help "manage" it. But for me, it isn't enough to simply manage it because I wasn't born with anxiety. Really bad experiences opened the door for anxiety to come in and raise havoc. So I am working on giving more energy to the real me as I discover her and confronting those fears/triggers that have stopped that from happening. To be continued.........