Glad some of this helps. The end of an 8 year relationship is the perfect reason to begin having anxiety, so that makes a lot of sense. So, give all of your fears and insecurities a voice. Sometimes I just sit down and write out everything I fear. I then write out the reasons why all of my fears are incorrect. (For example, you WILL love again, you ARE valuable, you ARE loveable, you WILL find someone else, you will NOT die alone, etc.)

I also surround myself with anything that can deliver the message that “Everything is going to be OK, I promise”. Sometimes its an uplifting movie, TV show, book, friends, activity, etc. That message is to reassure that scared part of you. Once you can tap into that place where you feel safe again, you feel safe enough to express all of those feelings – have a good cry, pound a pillow, scream and yell (in the car for instance where no one else can hear you), run 10 miles uphill, etc. All of these things express the negative feelings, which gets rid of the anxiety. “You have to feel it to heal it”.

Also, remember that anxiety is delivering a false message. Anxiety is not your intuition. Only that calm, grounded and peaceful place in you is the voice of intuition. (Fear = False Evidence Appearing Real or Forgetting Everything is All Right) So, part of anxiety’s expansion is the believe in the middle of an attack that somehow your intuition is speaking to you. It isn’t, I promise.

Also, try bodywork. Trauma and anxiety can live in the body so try massages, somatic therapy, etc. Take baths, take yoga, dance, or anything that soothes your body in a positive way.

It takes a while but you will get to the place where you look back and say, “wow, remember when I had all that anxiety?” It will feel like a place very far away from the happy peaceful place you will arrive. It doesn’t happen overnight, unfortunately. :O) But, day by day, it does happen. I know because I’m coming out of about a 2 year period of anxiety for me in a particular area of my life. The process for me followed a Bell curve – slow at first, then pretty bad and then slowly coming out the other side again. It can be hard to see out when you’re in the thick of it, but keep at it.