"He that finds his soul will lose it, and he that loses his soul for my sake will find it." - Matthew 10: 39
It astonishes me now to look back and see how much of my life has been dominated by fear. A vast majority of the difficulties I have faced in life I now realize were the result of nothing more than fear. I can now see everything from procrastinating to being being shy, from avoiding people to being hostile towards them, can be accounted for by fear.
Knowing the insidious ways fear has manipulated my life has helped me to deal with it when it comes now. I don't know that I experience any less anxiety now (some less due to medication, I think), but it really doesn't matter because allowing the fear to exist without paying it much attention has worked far better than trying to fight it, or give in to it.
Letting go of fear brings the benefit of letting go of control as well. Trying to control everything is exhausting. I had never known the joy of simply accepting what is and forgetting what I want it to be.
2 comments:
I have only recently found your blog, and have enjoyed reading it. It is eerie how I can fully relate to a lot of what you have said. I too have thought back over my life and can see how it has been ruled by anxiety and pure o. It wasn't until 2008 that I finally had the eureka moment of finding out what my problem was. It was good to know, but the start of a long battle.
I recently tried an ssri but I had to come off due to side effects. It's a harsh illness pure o, as I could see that they would help me, but only at the expense of side effects that I could not tolerate. Now I am going to try CBT alone first...
Good luck and keep posting if you have the time :)
CBT can be very helpful. It takes a long time to be effective, and it requires a large psychological investment, but it's dividends pay off.
I have been on SSRI's in the past. The medication that helped me the most of Lexapro. It helped give me my bearings so I could understand what it was I was even dealing with. I'm not currently on any medications as I kept running into issues with having a steady psychiatrist, but I've been able to cope quite well without them now that I know what it feels like to have been on them.
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