How Art Can Heal Anxiety
“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is the silence the mind.”– Caroline Myss When will this stop? Perched on the edge of the couch in my dark apartment, I draw deep breaths …
Anxiety
How I Put Chronic Worry Behind Me
“Worry is a misuse of the imagination.” – Dan Zadra I’m a worrywart, or should I say a recovering worrywart. The thing that started me on my path to recovery is the very thing that I tended to …
5 Things To Do If Anxiety Is Hurting Your Relationships
“Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.” ― Anaïs Nin …
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Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Women
Everybody gets socially anxious. For some, it is crippling, confining them to their homes. It is pathological, warrants the term ‘disorder’ and the medical treatment that goes with such diagnosis. To others, it is a minor annoyance: the …
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Brain-Taming 101
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” – Soren Kierkegaard They say anxiety is a future-focused problem. Depression is past-focused. Some of us are lucky enough to have both at the same time, meaning the present pretty much rolls …
Understanding The Paradox of Panic in Order to Overcome It
For some reason, I used to think paradoxes were hard to understand, and that they were somehow confusing and complex. Hearing the word would make my brain freeze up.
I used to confuse a paradox with an oxymoron, until I learned one day that “jumbo shrimp” was an oxymoron. That one stuck.
Waves of Emotion
There has always been an undercurrent of anxiety running through my life. Even though I am a pretty laid back guy, I find it hard to sit still or just be. Over time, I’ve become used to my anxiety. Like a refrigerator that runs quietly in the background, sometimes it’s not until it starts making noises that you notice it.
Surfing was one such noise that reminded me of my anxiety. Here’s how it reared its ugly head and and how I kept it at bay…
Reducing Anxiety: The 5 Personal Philosophies That Changed My Life
I think I left the house just a dozen times during my 5 consecutive years as an anxious recluse. This withdrawal from the world occurred during my twenties soon after I had finished college when I found myself at the mercy of multiple anxiety disorders.
Anxiety had been something I’d suffered from since childhood but the loss of the stable framework that education had provided left me suddenly adrift and directionless. Intense fear filled my mind every hour of every day, and soon I was plummeting into a downward spiral of acute anxiety and depression.
My parent’s home offered a retreat from reality which seemed like a blessing at first but which later turned into a self-imposed prison of isolation and excuses, which was very hard to escape.
How to Stop Worrying Now
Do you often find yourself worrying a lot? If so, you are not alone. I used to be a big time worrier.
I would worry constantly about things that would usually never happen. Time and time again it has happened to me. For example, here are some of the things I would worry about: How a visit would go before my company arrived; If I would get into a car accident before entering into rush hour traffic; If I would run into someone that I wasn’t on good terms with. I would also worry about “bigger” things like: