I like to use the analogy of a baby: If there’s something wrong or if a baby needs something, it just cries. I realized that I felt the worse when my anxiety was shouting the loudest, desperately in need of my care and attention. Instead of an evil shadowy demon on my back, anxiety became a small helpless furry animal, hiding somewhere in my brain, terrified. This mindset shift meant no longer fighting against myself but rather embracing who I am more fully, and finding ways to work with what I’ve got. So it was life-changing when I stopped seeing my anxiety as a curse and rather as a part of me that needed nurturing. But the struggle only makes things more difficult.
If you are born with a curse, you live your life under its shadow, constantly struggling against it, fighting to break free.
But I think that many people (an estimated 40 million adults in the United States, according to the National Alliance for Mental Illness) are already familiar with what I’m describing. I have lost more nights of sleep than I can count thanks to racing anxiety and panic that kept me up until sunrise.
Nor would I wish on my greatest enemies the feeling of being hungry but also so anxious that it feels like your throat is closed and you have no stomach to fill. I can’t fully express to you the hell of waking up in the morning, already in the midst of an extreme panic attack, for no apparent reason. Being born with hereditary depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder has seemed like a curse at times.
0 kommentar(er)
