1. We tend to reject anxiety’s milder forms and are really terrified by its intense moments, like with panic attacks. It’s difficult to see when we’re fighting with anxiety that it can have any benefit, but it does.
2. Anxiety comes with some great treasures hidden inside, and they can be yours if you know how to get to them. First, you have to stop fighting and listen to the anxiety for clues.
3. Its methods of stopping us are varied and some of the common ones are: spinning thoughts, feeling disassociated, heavy breathing, and a racing heart. Whatever works so that we’ll finally pay attention, it will customize for us.
4. The good news is that it’s an illusion. Anxiety will not hurt us in that way; but until we catch on, start listening, and heal the source of the messages, it will keep trying to spin us around so that we are facing it long enough to hear what it’s trying to say.
5. Anxiety can feel cyclic as it persists, and it’s easy to feel haunted or trapped by it. We are always in control though. The body, a part of nature, always seeks a point of balance and rest. When anxiety becomes cyclic and seemingly out of our control, it’s still just a part of us.
6. Anxiety messages can come from anything negative we have chosen to carry forward. It can be a traumatic or painful event left unresolved (usually through having had an attitude of sucking-it-up, being tough, trying to forget etc.).
7. I ran around trying to please others and attempting to be who they wanted me to be. On the anniversary of a particularly painful break-up, where I convinced myself I had become less than a full person, I had my first panic attack.
8. Who I became next was a happy, empowered, compassionate person who was more focused on matters of the heart and fulfilling myself than approval from others. Anxiety became my greatest life-shifting gift, and I’m forever grateful.
9. We don’t always know where our anxiety is coming from, so we have to take the time to dig and poke. Plus, we’re literal people. Our thoughts are literal. By using a linguistic mechanism the analogy of anxiety message becomes more clear and easier to work with.
10. Realize that we are each our own solution. You each have what we need to look clearly; to hear and to heal. Anxiety is a message born within each of us, speaking to each of us, through each of us, and therefore it’s within each of us to heal.
11. By learning about anxiety, spending time with it and finally holding in our hand, we can enjoy the next step: We can relax our grip, and let it fall away. It will have served its purpose. We will have loved that part of ourselves and it won’t need to get our attention with such a difficult message again.
12. The next time we experience anxiety or fear, we can take a look at it. Ask ourselves if the anxiety is stemming from a real or imagined threat. Then try to determine whether the anxiety may be telling us that something is important or matters to us, and if so, make the choice to move forward.
Philippians 4:6-7
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.