Dear joanna:

You are welcome. Managing and healing from anxiety is a process that requires a lot of patience as you persist doing what works even when it doesn’t. You continue to do what is right for you when distressed. Can’t wait until calm and then do what is right for you, got to do it now, when distressed. Over time the distress will lessen.

Regarding the calm place, it was like that: that particular therapist (it was not a session, but a seminar, with a group of people, a couple of hours, that day) told me to look at my big toe (must have been wearing sandals). He said something like: look at your toe. It is part of you. It is not all of you. You are looking at it. In a similar way, look at your anxiety: it is part of you but not all of you. Look at it.

When I was anxious that evening, in the process of panicking (2013), I removed my focus from the panic and looked at it from a distance (as in the distance between my eyes/ face and my toe). That distance was what it took for me to remove myself from the panic. And all I was left with was the anxiety, still distressing but not overwhelming.

anita