Living with extreme anxiety has been one of the most challenging hurdles I’ve had to overcome in my life.
Where I am now is much different than where I was just a few short years ago.
I categorize extreme anxiety as any chronic anxiety that affects every other area of your life. Sure, every person experiences anxiety to some degree. Anxiety is quite natural and not always a negative thing. For example, if you’re about to play in a big championship basketball game, experiencing a certain level of anxiety is completely normal. If managed properly, anxiety can help remind us of challenges and obstacles that we face in our lives. None of this is a “bad” thing.
But the type of anxiety I am referring to is not typical; it’s “extreme.”
Extreme or severe anxiety occurs even when there are no major life events, family drama, job interviews, or serious health conditions.
Everyday life is anxiety-ridden when you are dealing with extreme anxiety.
I WAS JUST A LITTLE TIKE
When I was a youngster, no older than five or six, I can remember feeling severely anxious. At the time, I had no idea what anxiety was or how it played a role in my feeling on edge. I was too young to understand any of the more complex neuroscientific and psychological explanations. But I just knew that I felt icky – and I would struggle at times.
I can remember playing basketball in grade school. The coach was a guy who would get angry and yell a lot, and I can remember having stomach aches before every practice because I was terrified of this guy. As a ten-year-old, my brain wasn’t developed enough to handle both my anxiety and a screaming hot head coach. My anxiety would flare up around these types of authoritarian personalities.
My anxiety also flared up during certain classes I took in high school. If it was an area or subject I struggled with; I would instantly be thrown into a negative thought loop.
“I’m not good enough.”
“I’m going to fail.”
“Something bad is going to happen!”
These are the thoughts that ran around in my mind daily.
THE ENVIRONMENT AROUND ME
I was nine years old when my parents got divorced.
And I’ll never forget the look in my dad’s eyes as he told my sister and I (my brother was at college at the time) for the first time. He was enraged, and let us know it. It was a crushing blow to my already fragile mind. Although I didn’t fully comprehend what divorce meant, I knew the road would be different.
And it sure was.
I lived in five different homes (seven if you count my dad’s places) in five years, went to three different schools, lives in three different cities, and then watched my dad date other women, and my mom get remarried.
By the end of those five years, I was emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted. Over 25 years later, I have finally understood how that time in my life drastically affected my anxiety.
And before I go on, let me say this.
I DO NOT blame my parents for my anxiety. Could they have handled certain aspects of the divorce better? Yes, but they did the best they could at the time. And quite frankly, without my youth’s experience, I wouldn’t be able to help those who are struggling today.
But reflecting on that era made me realize the importance of a stable environment.
As a child, you have little control over your outer environment. So, you have to make do with what you’re given.
It’s critical that we understand how are environments can contribute to either increasing or decreasing our anxiety.
What do I mean by “environment?”
Any people, places, locations, events, or things that are happening or present around us.
All of these make up your outer environment, and they all affect our mental well-being.
STRUGGLES AS AN ADULT
I spent most of my later teen and college years partying and having fun.
Although I enjoyed much of my life back in those days, there was still an underlying issue of anxiety and depression. I never thought much about the anxiety, and instead focused more on the depression, which had gotten worse on more than a few occasions. But what I hadn’t pieced together was that my bouts of severe anxiety were causing my depressive episodes.
I would often fall into vicious cycles of obsessive negative thinking, followed by intense worry, and finally, physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion would trigger depression.
This cycle lasted for many years until my early to mid-thirties. After suffering the worst depression of my life at thirty-three, I decided enough was enough.
I needed to find solutions.
I COULDN’T ESCAPE
Throughout my life, there have been anxious moments I couldn’t entirely escape.
It was early one morning, and I woke up at my brother’s house in Southern Ohio. The year was 1999. As if an emotional tidal wave hit me, I was instantaneously filled with awful worry. I was struggling with one of the classes I was taking in high school, and the thoughts of me failing, or worse yet, making a fool of myself in front of my peers, shook me to my core.
For most people who don’t struggle with severe anxiety, these fears aren’t uncommon either. The difference is that they can move on from the worry and anxiety without affecting the other areas of your life. I had a hard time doing this.
That entire weekend was spent with a pit in my stomach.
Fast forward a few years later.
I’m in college and dating a girl I liked. She was my first long term relationship, and to this day, I still consider her a good friend. But back in those days, I was an emotional mess. Any time she would go out without me, I told myself, “She’s going to cheat on you.” These thoughts would spin around like a top in my head until the worry was so grave I would become physically ill. Looking back, of course, I feel silly and insecure. But the root of the problem went beyond young insecurity – it was the constant need for worry and anxiety that my body was chemically conditioned to feel over the years.
But all of these obsessive worries eventually lead me to the most profound belief of my life.
MINDFULNESS IS THE KEY TO UNLOCKING YOUR FREEDOM
Mindfulness.
I can’t tell you how much that one word has changed my life.
Mindfulness, or being fully present in the moment, is the one single domino that has knocked down all other anxiety-ridden barriers.
But why does being fully present in the moment make such a difference?
Michael Jordan, who many think is the greatest basketball player in the game’s history, was known for his athletic prowess. During the documentary on his Chicago Bulls dynasty called “The Last Dance,” there was an interesting comment that Michael’s natural basketball talents wasn’t what made him special; it was his ability to be present in the moment that separated Michael from the rest.
Here are a few thoughts to consider:
- The far majority of worries we have will never occur
- For the worries that do occur, most are not as bad as we project in our minds
- Being fully present takes dedication and hard work
- Mindfulness is a skill that can be honed over time
- Being mindful robs anxiety of its power because we are focused on the present moment, not some future reality that will likely never exist
Once I realized that my anxiety stemmed from ruminating over the past or worrying about the future, everything changed.
Mindfulness is not easy to achieve, and certainly not for those of us who struggle with anxiety. But I’m here to tell you that if you put the effort in and practice mindfulness every day, you’ll slowly change the way your brain reacts to the world around you. Instead of instantly fearing, worrying, and ruminating, it will let those thoughts pass through and get back to the present moment.
Once you get better at doing this, you’ll start to see a difference in your anxiety levels.
REAL CHANGE IS HARD, BUT WELL WORTH THE COST
Anything of substance that I’ve accomplished in my life took hard work.
There are no shortcuts to better managing and reducing our anxiety. It’s challenging work and takes some time. Focusing on what you can control and what you can change NOW is the first step. Do not get caught up in what will happen a year from now, or what has happened in your past. Just keep going, keep working, and keep learning.
In general, mental health is no different from physical health in this sense; they both take time to heal deep wounds.
Anxiety can rip holes through our well-being, thought processes, confidence, and relationships amongst many other areas. Mending these holes takes time. Be patient, and honor your feelings. There will be days when you want to quit. And there will be days that you fall back into old thought patterns that bring you down and cause you suffering. It’s okay, keep going, and remember to come back to the basics – sleep, nutrition, mindfulness, exercise, and other keystone habits.
Nobody said this would be easy, but I’m here to tell you that the healing journey is well worth the difficulty.
MEDITATION IS A GAME CHANGER
I started my meditation practice in 2016.
Before that, I had only tried meditating once, maybe twice, and never felt comfortable while doing it.
My head spun with thoughts, and I couldn’t get to the “silent” and peaceful place I assumed meditation should be.
But here is the secret truth about meditation that many people, especially those who don’t have much experience with it, do not understand – you will never be able to entirely “stop your thoughts” all of the time.
Many times, my meditation is filled with intrusive thoughts popping in and out of my mind. The key is to let them flow through you without getting caught up in any individual thought. Often we will latch on to a particular thought and then become immersed within the emotion attached to it. Try letting each thought pass by like a train car.
After learning and practicing meditation for a period, I began craving it.
Meditation has potentially many benefits, including becoming more patient, reducing anger and emotional outbursts, reducing the odds of heart disease, and increasing self-awareness and compassion for ourselves and others, to name a few.
Over time, after practicing daily meditation, I began to notice many of the changes above. My blood pressure also went down. And anytime I am stressed out or feeling worn down and anxious, I fall back on meditation. Even for five minutes, it makes a difference.
I strongly recommend looking into meditation.
HERE IS A BEGINNERS GUIDE to starting a meditation practice.
JOURNALING BRINGS CLARITY
Journaling is something I have been doing since I was a teenager in middle school.
What do I consider journaling?
Journaling, to me, is any handwritten or virtually-logged record of your thoughts and emotions at any given moment in your life.
When people think of journaling, they often don’t know the long-term benefits it can have on their lives. Not only is journaling helpful in the present moment by letting you release the thoughts and emotions of that moment or a moment in the past, but it also allows you to reflect months and years later.
Reviewing your journal can show you patterns and automatic behaviors over a more extended period. Doing this has helped me with the anxiety I have faced over my life by giving me a mirror to reflect on who I surround myself with and how I tend to respond to them.
For example:
After journaling over a period of years, I noticed specific anxious-ridden thought patterns and situations in my life. These situations were with different people, locations, relationships, and environments. Yet, I would engage in the same negative thoughts and emotional anxiety cycles.
This gave me the clarity that is wasn’t the people around me, causing me the suffering; it was how I responded to those people. And it was also who I surrounded myself with – they didn’t choose me, I chose them.
But why?
Journaling helps answer many of those questions.
YOU CAN’T CHANGE OTHERS, ONLY YOUR PERSPECTIVE
Oh, perspective, you are a beautiful thing.
The older we get, the easier it becomes to spot a simple truth; we do not have the power to change others. No matter how we want them to think, feel, or behave, we cannot wave a magic wand and change their behavior. People will behave based on the blend of their genetics and the environment (the external situation around them). And this process is different for every human being.
What we do have power over is our perspective on people and our situation in life.
Once you change your perspective on a situation, the situation changes.
And by changing your perspective on difficult situations, you will help alleviate any added anxiety that might have hindered you otherwise.
Perspective is everything.
IN REVIEW
Dealing with severe anxiety comes with a plethora of ups and downs.
The emotional roller coasters I have faced during my severe anxiety years are enough to construct a thousand amusement parks.
I understand there are those of you facing even worse anxiety than me.
It’s hard, and it’s overwhelming. It’s also scary.
But keep going. If you continue to build on healthy habits, reflect on what you’ve learned from your past, and stay mindful in the present moment, you’ll be giving yourself more than a fighting chance against anxiety.
Stay with it, my friends.
You got this.
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