Dear Christy Lim:

You are welcome to come back to your thread any time you feel demotivated.

Distraction helps, sure, being busy, having a daily routine is very helpful for an anxious person. Of course you can’t be busy ALL the time, can’t be effectively distracted all the time. Feeling anxious does feel “abnormal”, doesn’t it? I know the feeling very well, unfortunately. It is so good to feel calm that you hope to never be anxious again, but then… here it is, again.

What brought about anxiety, experiences in childhood, can be looked at, insight gained, and that can be very helpful but even if you gain all the intellectual understanding of how your anxiety came about, you will still be anxious because the brain is in the habit of being anxious. Connections in the brain are already in place that will bring back the unpleasant experience of anxiety.

Healing from anxiety involves insight into the origination of the anxiety, understanding the habits of the mind that keep the anxiety going and learning new skills so to create new habits of the mind. It is a very slow process, but if you take it on consistently, in a few months you will experience a great difference and in a few years, a much greater difference. It will not be a linear process, getting better and better in time. There will be better, then worse, then better, and so on. Overall there will be progress.

Did you attend psychotherapy so far? And would you like to share about the origination of your anxiety- where, when and how it started?

anita