Lose Your Anxiety

“As Soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Some days it seems like everyone is dealing with some type of anxiety. But you and I don’t want to talk about it, or do we? Either this topic is one we are all getting more comfortable discussing or we are living in much stressier times. Or both! Anxiety is recognized as a legitimate mental illness, and this acknowledgement is helping people ask for what they need. People feel validated and heard.

Until my family and I navigated ourselves and three rescue dogs through Hurricane Irma, I don’t think I truly understood the impact of generalized anxiety. Yes I’ve been stressed out, but the anxiety hangover following Irma has been a life lesson. Wowza.

In some of my reading, I’ve learned anxiety can be brought about by our need to control. I suppose this can be true in some circumstances, perhaps in most of them. Clearly we each have a distinct set of triggers based on experiences, and also which methods or solutions we respond well to when seeking relief.

What I’m learning from dealing with my own triggers and also a few of my clients, is there is a definite connection between when we are being true to ourself or authentic and when we are allowing an outside influence to control our situation and our reaction to the situation.

What I am also finding to be absolutely true, is that when I work with clients to quell this feeling, and they continue to practice their chosen methods, their anxiety appears less frequently. Another observation is that the more we work through these feelings, the more my clients uncover the cause, in many cases, on their own. And yes, so often the cause contains some element of control, but much of it seems to be connected to our need to be accepted, understood, loved. HOLY MOLY, when we don’t feel loved by those we value, the stress and pain can be overwhelming.

I listened to a friend talk recently about not feeling whole. I imagine this must create an enormous amount of anxiety. We seem to place value on so many outside influencers, other people’s opinions or thoughts of what we need to do or be. We stare down other peoples successes and forget to trust our own instincts, to trust ourselves, and to just Be!

What if we choose instead, to get slow, get quiet, listen to our heart and our intuition. In order to get truly present, we need to create time to sit with our uncomfortable feelings, examine them and try to understand where they come from. Most importantly, we need to trust ourselves, know that we ARE whole, we are enough … so much enough, love ourselves from the inside out.

I happen to believe this starts with being all of you, being so real. With this comes less anxiety and more freedom. Care to try this on?