Again, I would like to apologize for not posting yesterday. It is finals week and I had 2 finals that needed to be taken yesterday so I was pretty much out of the house, taking those finals, but all that is done and I am back with another blog which I hope will help you.
Living in the present is probably the most difficult thing to do when you are suffering from anxiety. It's actually difficult for many people, regardless of whether they have anxiety or not.
Many times we sit and think about "what if's," what if I don't get better? What if I am never normal again? I have some questions for you as well, what if you get better and what if you are more normal and happier than ever before? What if that happens? You never know what is going to happen. You never know where life is going to take you. You probably didn't know years from now you would have had anxiety and you probably never thought to yourself "what if I get anxiety?"
Life takes its unexpected twists and turns. We end up where we least imagined and that is fine. Life isn't suppose to be planned. The spontaneous twists and turns that life takes is what makes everything so much more memorable and worth living. Nothing is mundane and that's just the way it is suppose to be. At the end no one gets out with out scars. Each of us has bad memories that effect us in one way or another. The bad memories are what makes us who we are. They strengthen and deepen our character and make us proud to be who we are. Those memories give us personality and each of us is unique in several ways. Our experiences shape our future for the better.
After going through anxiety, I caught myself wondering how my grandma does everything with so much ease. Life's struggles and problems do not scare her and she goes on with her life without a worry. When I asked her how she lives life so freely, I was able to hear stories of her life in which she struggled. Listening to those stories made me realize that her life isn't and wasn't as free and happy as I had always imagined. She has faced many problems in her life and those are her scars. Her experience is always by her side which builds her character, but at the end she knows that holding on to worries and past experiences isn't going to take her anywhere.
The moral of the story is that the past has passed by. There is no point in holding on to it and worrying about it. Chances are there is nothing about the past that you can change. It's done and over with. It's a done deal. You can't bring it back and change it so why worry? Just try to move on.
With anxiety it is hard to move on from the past. We have two types of pasts with anxiety. The first one is our past with anxiety, which we are not able to let go of because of our fear. We are always afraid that we may experience anxiety in the future. We remember our experience with it and carry it with us in the present. The second past is the past that we had before anxiety. We carry that around with us because it was our happy past. Even though it had ups and downs we were happy and we cannot let that go. We remember the small happy moments we spent here and there and wonder when all of that will come back to our life again.
We remember the first past when we are happy. When we are happy we become afraid of our past with anxiety and start to wonder "what if it comes again?" At times we feel like "you know what if it comes I will deal with it again." Yet, deep down we know that, that may not be true and that if it does come again we may not be able to be happy with it and there is no need to beat yourself up for that. Nobody in their right mind would want to deal with such pain again. It's not that you haven't accepted it, it is just that you are fearful of it. What you need to understand is that just because anxiety happened in your past doesn't mean it will happen in your future. Just because you've faced setbacks before doesn't mean you will face another setback. Furthermore, with time and experience you will accept that anxiety is just a feeling and it will not take control of your life. I am not able to write this blog because I had a quick experience with anxiety and was able to get myself out of it with a snap of a finger. I am able to write this blog because anxiety was something I dealt with. It is something that scarred me. A scar that I will happily carry with me. It makes me who I am and I love that part of me regardless of the pain it once caused me.
We remember our second, more happier past when we are feeling down. We think back to the times we were happier and wish that we can be the same way again. We remember all those happy moments wondering when they will come back and if they will come back. We compare our life now to our life in the past and assess how much easier it was. If you look back at your life in kindergarten or as a kid you will realize that it was a lot easier. However, as you grew older, life become tougher and tougher and that is just the way life is. Life gets tougher and tougher as we get older and as more responsibilities are put on us. That is one of the reasons why you shouldn't compare your life now to your life before. Things change and our lives change. Expecting things to be the same as they were before is kind of like setting yourself up to get hurt. You cannot expect your life to remain the same and expect things to always be constant. Things change, life changes and we change. Each day, each minute, each moment we learn something new. It may not seem so, but we do. After you are done reading this blog you will have learned something new because you have now read my perspective. It doesn't mean you will apply this perspective, but you have read, understood and learned my perspective, hence, something has changed. Life is constantly changing. Therefore, do not expect for it to be the same.
I am going to end this blog here. I have written the second portion of this blog and I will post it after I have posted this one. I hope this has helped you and I will talk to you guys all in the next blog.
-Abigail Monroe
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