The clients that I work with have many life experiences and events that they have experienced, which have formed the stem of their anxieties and their concerns. Whether this means parents who projected their thoughts and fears of an unstable world environment into them, or carers who were emotionally missing for them. For others, persistent criticism by care givers, friends or bullying at school, all added to the anxiety that they feel as adults.
For some, anxiety and related obstacles like panic attacks or agoraphobia, have become life limiting and limit their experience of the beauty of nature and self-confidence within themselves. They have come to believe that they are defined by anxiety.
I always make it a point in working with clients to re-affirm to them that they are more than their anxieties. That their multi-faceted experiences, thoughts, lives and beliefs mean that they are much more than the condition and that their lives do not have to be wholly defined by anxiety. I am also aware that for some this is very difficult to hang onto when anxiety affects them on an hourly or a daily basis and when it has been going on for so long that they cannot remember life without it.
However, the key to recovery is to see life as more than just anxiety. In widening a view of life that includes pleasures, interests, stronger beliefs in the goodness of others and in connectivity with others, people who have anxiety can start to see a future that looks less bleak and less confrontational. This is the start of a healing journey that may take years or even decades, but it is a critical step in that journey.
