Look For The Parts Of Your Creativity That Don’t Trigger Your Anxiety

It’s a good place to start

I think I’ve lived with anxiety my entire life. Even though I wasn’t officially in therapy for anxiety until my early twenties, I can remember being a kid with unexplainable stomachaches and difficulty breathing.

My family would explain away those episodes as “being in my head” and for a long time their explanation felt like my truth. The remnants of believing those explanations laid a foundation of mistrust within myself. It was hard to believe that what I was experiencing was real because I was so readily told that more than not being real, it was totally something else.

Going to therapy helped me reacquaint myself with what my anxiety actually is and how it manifests in my life. Therapy has played the biggest role in teaching me to search for peace, even if it’s full of discomfort at first.

Here’s what I mean with that — there are things, situations, or people who make us uncomfortable because they are dangerous or put us at risk, but then there’s this bucket of life that feels uncomfortable at first because it’s the opposite of what we’re used to. If you’ve become used to being led by your anxiety in your life and in your work, something like closing the computer at 5 to hang out with your family may…