Overcoming Anxiety

Anxiety can feel tense, tight, and overwhelming. 

It can feel like there is no escape, and no way out.

It can steal your happiness, your joy, and keep you from being your true self.  It can take your sleep, make you feel stuck, inadequate and incapable.   It can kill your motivation and sense of purpose and surround you with endless negative feelings that can torment and overtake your body.

I know... I've had plenty of my fair share of anxiety.   

I used to think that anxiety was a new illness, that became more popular in the last 20 years.  I still remember my first friend (back around 2003) telling me she had anxiety, and I was like, "What? Anxiety? Just stop worrying...you're fine!"   

It was about 10 years later when I had teenagers that I finally realized I too was suffering from anxiety.  (It wasn't the teenager's fault).

I remember laying in my bed wishing it would go away.   I remember sleepless nights.   I remember waking up in the morning and before my eyelids were even open that awful pang would hit my stomach.

Most therapists will tell you that anxiety is worrying about the future while depression is ruminating in your past.  That it's a mental illness.

On my quest to get rid of anxiety, the first place I started was with a coach that promised to help me get over it.   Unfortunately, that process only had me focusing on it so much more, that it increased and multiplied.

I then tried all the supplements.   It was my gut, not me.  Didn't work.

I kept up my regular routine of exercise, hoping that my energized feelings would take it away, but it didn't.

I tried brain dumping, and thinking new thoughts.   Still suffering.

I tried working one on one with professionals.   And I would feel better that day or the next day, but 2 or 3 days down the road, the anxiety would creep back into my life. 

Over the past few years, with all of the research and experimenting I've done, I've come to understand that anxiety is an experience, not a disease. 

It's also a silent experience.   I've been amazed at the seemingly happiest and most successful people around me that I have learned are suffering from anxiety.   It seems these days that everyone has it.

And I've also learned that it's a matter of habit.   That our minds start to move towards a way of thinking that causes stress and worry (cue teenagers) and over time the mind continues to stay in stress and worry and we don't realize that our minds have created pathways that lead to those darker thoughts over and over and now that mental pathway is the new normal.

And lastly, I've learned that at the core of every worry, every stress and every sense of overwhelm is a deep down belief of what those things mean about us.

Our belief in who we are, or who we aren't (self-judgement) is at the core of every emotion.  If you take any worry, and go 7 layers deep, you will find that the core of that worry is that it means you're not really worthy or that you're not enough.

So if we know that that is the core belief that is affecting all emotions, then it only makes sense to work from the inside out.

To create a fuller, more true understanding of who we really are as Children of God.

That we are made from light and love.   And that we have full access to these emotions all day every day too.

And that with baby steps (line upon line), we can create new pathways in our mind to free us of the dark emotions clinging to anxiety and live in a more free state.

Free to be truly happy.

Free to feel light.  To be ourselves.

Free to operate from a place of love.

And free from the feelings of anxiety.

The beginning of Matt: 5:16 now has a whole new meaning for me.   

"Let your light so shine.."   We are meant to live in emotional freedom!  God is showing us the way and giving us the tools.   We just have to learn how to use them the right way to create the best paths in our mind that will lead us to feelings and emotions that are good, full, loving and wonderful!

And with the right tools and daily practice, you too can baby step your way to better mental and emotional habits, and live in the peace and joy that is rightfully yours!

I'd love to show you how!   

-Amy