Feeling Good About Feeling Good

Whether you’ve had an anxiety disorder for months or several years something is bound to happen. That is you are bound to feel good at some point. And when this happens you should of course feel good about feeling good. But when you do feel good do you enjoy it? Or are you waiting for the next time you won’t feel good?

Chances are that you are probably somewhere in the middle when it comes to this question. However I would strongly urge you to reexamine the tendency to not fully enjoy the good times when they come.

Take me for example, for a long time I would get bouts of anxiety for what seemed like weeks. Then, suddenly, the anxiety would lift and I would find myself feeling better but I was always just a bit short of perfect and little shy of calm.

I always had this deep seeded fear lurking just waiting to come out. It took me a very long time to stop this behavior. Although I knew it was bad to always be in a state of near panic, I almost couldn’t help myself.

So what changed for me? Really nothing major with the exception of one thing. I finally learned that no matter what I did sometimes I was just going to be nervous. And after a lot of trial and error I finally, really, accepted this fact.

I finally said to myself that I could in fact tolerate being anxious. After all what is the alternative? Really I found that when you are truly involuntarily nervous there was no alternative. In addition to that simple thought I also finally accepted that although hideously unsettling anxiety was not a murderous disease. It was more of a nasty feeling – thought connection and not something that was going to do something to me.

This I think is the most difficult thing for anxiety sufferers to understand and most importantly accept. The fact that anxiety is tolerable, and by definition manageable, and also not deadly is a revolutionary idea. Realizing this allows you to release the tense hold you have on yourself and to pursue the things that you avoided before.

This is not an easy task by any stretch. In fact I hate when people over simplify things because I feel like they are insulting my intelligence. Make $200,000 a month, work only 4 hours a week and be rich, have perfect relationships and do it all in three easy steps.

But when it comes to anxiety the simple explanation and solutions tend to be the most valid. Exactly why eludes me but it seems to be so. After 10 years I learned this and I would hate for anyone else living on this planet living with anxiety not to know this.

I hate to think of anyone wasting any number of years being confused on the best way to live with an anxiety disorder. The exact way, I hope, has been laid out in this blog for several months. And for the past several months I have worked on this because I want all anxiety sufferers to be clear on the fact that they don’t have to suffer.

Having anxiety is hard and it is unpleasant to say the least but that does not mean that you can’t have a life. So when the time comes and you start feeling better, be happy and don’t sit in anticipation of the next bad time.

I know it’s very tempting because we are so good at anticipating but we should refrain and instead focus on the fact that we do feel good. It’s sort of like being an NFL quarterback (for those that don’t know the guy who throws the ball). They get hit a lot and have bad games, but they also have to forget the bone jarring hits very fast or they will never get better, they will never improve because they will always be living in fear of the next big hit.

So with respect to anxiety I highly recommend that you have a short memory. When it happens it happens but when it’s done move on. You will have good days, so enjoy them all.

Related posts: