Anxiety Makes It Impossible to Be Who I Truly Am

What’s the point of existing if we can’t love and live fully without the constant shroud of anxiety?

Photo by Tim Stief on Unsplash

I get lost in my mind, but now I know I will not be lost forever.

The dark voices, fearful emotions, repetitive worries, and anxious feelings in my mind drag me down as I navigate my river of life.

Yet, I know that my reactions, feelings, and thoughts cannot be eternal, universal truths.

But I wonder: do anxiety, rumination, negativity, and helplessness happen because we are locked inside the most rudimentary cages of our biological responses?

I think so.

—

“I was dead, then alive.
Weeping, then laughing.
The power of love came into me,
and I became fierce like a lion,
then tender like the evening star.” — Rumi

I’ve always been anxious.

Maybe it was my parents’ divorce at 15. Perhaps it was the decades of wondering what I had done wrong. Maybe it was my heightened sensitivity to a dad who yelled, castigated, punished, and minimized me. Maybe my childhood made me aware of everything that could…