Hey NeedAChange,

This is only my 2cent so it might not be helpful, but there are somethings that might be beneficial to look closely at.

From a previous post, you’ve wrote that you’ve observed that you don’t like being out of control. You’ve also feared the judgement of others thus that fear turned into you trying to control certain bodily functions. So from that, a correlation between your anxiety and your fear of losing control can be made. Now, you haven’t mentioned if you troubled with generalized anxiety disordered (GAD), but your anxiety seems to be more pronounce than normal so you’ll have to see a specialist about that.

Now, from the correlation above, let’s frame your anxiety in a simple way. You seem to be a person who likes being in control, but you’ve also realized from a young age that you can’t control certain things about life, like the actions of others or events that will occur outside of your jurisdiction. That ‘realization’ seem to have become fuel for your anxiety because you were anxious if your parents would come back to you or not when you were younger. That, and it didn’t seem that your parents did much in trying to help you accept those worries for what they are, which was one of the ways you were trying to obtained a degree of control over a situation where you felt you had no control. You don’t write of many coping mechanisms  You also haven’t kept with many strategies, it seems, in how to embrace your anxiety then let it go. To this day, you still view it as a enemy to be defeated or ignored.

You don’t like losing control, but your thoughts are reminding you of what you don’t have control over. You’ve identified your anxious thoughts as bad so you tried to push them away. Even now, your anxiety is fueled by the need to remind you that you don’t have as much control as you think you need, your thoughts included. So you feel the need to ‘fix it’ so you can be in control again, but there’s a problem to that mindset.

I don’t know if the counselor you visited ever told you, or they did yet you didn’t think it impossible, but anxiety isn’t something that can be ‘fixed’. By nature, every human being will experience anxiety in their life in some way. Anxiety is a natural feeling, but some people do feel it more intensely and for longer periods of time and it seems you fit into that category. There is no fix solutions to general anxiety disorder because it’s a feeling. You can’t tell yourself how to feel; you simply feel. It’s just that your mind tend to rush in to add color to that feeling which then magnify it while your whole body is already reacting to that feeling. From something minor, it intensify and continues on like a broken record.

So when you don’t feel in control, that fuels your anxiety which then send bad messages through your head which makes you feel even more out of control which spike your anxiety so the messages keep repeating and on and on. That’s a vicious cycle for you to go through, day in and day out. And anything that you don’t have control over can trigger your anxiety.

But there is nothing wrong with your anxieties, you simply feel it intensely. Therefore, you have to learn how to live with it, not ‘cure’ it. But how you live with it is entirely dependent on you. Some people like to simply stop, acknowledge their anxiety and move on. Some reason about why they might be feeling anxious. Some breathe deeply, say thank you and then move forward. Some think happy thoughts. Some eat something sweet. Some take a walk. Each methods is unique to the person so you’ll have to make your own.

I don’t know you personally so I can only write down these thoughts, whether they help you find any clues regarding your situation, you’ll have to decide for yourself. But I do think you should visit another counselor if you can. The first one might not have worked out for you, but there are more people out there who might be able to help you, the thing is that you need to continue looking until you find someone that you mesh well with. It takes a lot of work to care for your own health, but all that work is worth it as long as you make yourself a treasure to care for.

Good luck.