Many people have anxiety, and in fact, many have it and do not know or recognize it. It is the most common mental illness in the United States, with about 18% of the adult population having it. It can be hard admitting to it and it can be even harder seeking out help, especially if getting help is not encouraged in your environment. This doesn’t mean you have to suffer in silence, though. You can help yourself! Anxiety is highly treatable and doesn’t have to stay with you for your entire life.
One way to help yourself with your anxiety is to understand what causes it for you; some people are able to see therapists, but if you are not, there is no reason for you to not discover things about yourself through being your own specialist. You can become self-aware through writing without restraint and then going back to look at what you’ve written later on. The purpose of going back later is so that you give yourself time to cool down if you got emotional while writing, and even if you were fine the whole time, it never hurts to take a short period of rest between action and response. This process produces the expression and documentation of raw thoughts and feelings you may have so it is easier for you to find what you are looking for within yourself, instead of you possibly thinking obsessively, which can be harmful to you.
Anxiety might be a feeling that manifests when you are not comfortable with something in your situation. Understanding this, or whatever the cause of yours is, creates a clearer space within yourself from which you can view panic attacks or anxious feelings from.
You may not be able to explain everything about your anxiety with one thing, but working out one root of your feelings gives you insight to what causes what you feel.
From this point, you are better able to change your thinking and behavior to decrease your anxiety, because after learning to understand what we fear, we are better-equipped to handle it in any situation. If we can step back and view the components of a situation and compare them to what we already know, we are allowed to spot similarities and consequently solve our problems faster.
Over time, if you practice understanding why you feel how you feel, you are bound to deal with you anxiety better than you could before. And in a while, you will be able to look at the progress you have made not just in yourself, but in your life.
