Anxiety sucks! its a fact.
All those feelings of impending doom and overwhelm, making life seem like its so much harder than it needs to be. I know this as I too have been at the receiving end of thoughts and feelings that can be so hard to shake.
Anxiety is made up of so much that we do not realise, it doesn't happen over night and is often triggered by a build up of experiences and their resulting response. For Example, when I was 16 I developed a real issue with food, I had been bullied for being overweight for a number of years and all of a sudden I decided in my anxious mind to just stop eating. I had read an article stating that humans could survive without food for up to 3 weeks as long as they were getting water, this began a pattern for around 6 months of me just drinking fruit squash for 2 weeks with tiny amounts of food or none at all. As long as I kept drinking I would be fine I would tell myself, a hospital stay just a few months later would prove this to be sadly not so - I will tell that story another time.
Now, on reflection as to why I did this, you like me, might be mistaken in thinking it was because I was bullied and overweight and wanted to lose a few pounds fast. Partly yes, yet the full scale of what led to these thoughts was much bigger and crazier, and would not become obvious until much later (7 years to be exact) when I began to resolve and remove my demons. I had made the decision as it gave me control over something, at a time when I felt so lost and out of control I was able to manage and regulate this part of my life to the nth degree if I wanted to. It became my life, I was obsessive, I felt so lost in all other areas and this gave me a sense of discipline in my own life. Of course this was not a good thing at all! I did untold damage to myself both physically and mentally during this time. The truth is that years of bullying, low self esteem, emotional trauma and the loss of my grandparents all contributed to my irrational thinking and the overwhelming panic/anxiety that led me into this warped belief that this was helping me. I was actually distracting myself as whilst I was so focused on this I was able to shut out a lot of the pain I was feeling, I had one thought and it was taking over my life! I was seeing a counsellor at the time who was attempting to help me to get to grips with my anxiety, but we were only looking at one of the built up areas of concern with my therapy: the bullying, as this was what the counsellor and I believed to be the reason behind my difficulties. Whilst my focus was on that area the other issues were still able to grow as they went unchecked, and grow is just what they did! Even when due to a serious healthcare I was able to come back from the grips of a potential eating disorder, I continued to do harm to myself in other ways for another 7 years!
It was only when I stripped back the full extent of what other variables had been at play in we making these often foolish and damaging decisions, and their resulting behaviour to the root was I able to decipher ALL of the underlying reasons behind them and fully resolve my anxiety. When I stripped back the bigger picture into its smaller frames and pixels and then assessed each emotion present, working through each of them individually. Only then did I feel the weight shift, my mood and mindset improve and my life transform. I am no longer the frightened, overwhelmed, anxious and depressed girl I once was, I am now a strong lioness of a woman, driven to help others achieve their own transformations and heal themselves of the wounds that hold them back.
THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY, resolving the point that the issue presents itself only deals with the trigger and not the root cause so the roots will continue to grow creating havoc in their path.
Comments