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Posts tagged with “anxiety”

Learning How to Live Life to the Fullest with Mental Illness

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There is a famous Latin phrase that I absolutely love: Carpe diem. It means “Seize the day.” Younger people might be more familiar with the phrase “You only live once,” or YOLO. Both phrases encourage people to live their lives to the fullest.

I have struggled with depression and anxiety since my childhood, making it difficult to live by these phrases and enjoy life. I’ve missed out on a lot of precious moments with loved ones.

Recently, however, my mental health has been taking a turn for the better, and I’ve been doing my best to make up for all

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Anxiety Overestimates the Threat

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How to Feel Safe When Panic Feels Dangerous

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“Anxiety isn’t you. It’s something moving through you. It can leave out of the same door it came in.” ~James Clear

Years ago, I had a panic attack while driving across a bridge, and I thought I might die that day.

Suddenly my heart started pounding. My breath became shallow and tight. My chest felt constricted, and a wave of dizziness washed over me.

I was driving sixty miles per hour, and there was nowhere to pull over. The bridge stretched for miles, suspended over open water, and I was alone in the car.

A terrifying thought shot through my …

Anxiety Sucks, But It Taught Me These 7 Important Things

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“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” ~Soren Kierkegaard

Let’s be clear:

This isn’t an article about positive thinking.

This isn’t an article about how silver linings make everything okay.

This isn’t an article about how your perspective on anxiety is all wrong.

The kids call those things “toxic positivity.”

No toxic positivity here.

This is an article about my lifelong relationship with anxiety and what I’ve learned from something that won’t go away. At times the anxiety spikes and feels almost crippling. I have a hard time appreciating the learning at those times, but it’s still there.

That is what …

What’s Really Happening When Your Thoughts Spiral at Night

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“The anxiety is not the enemy. It is the messenger. The mistake is killing the messenger instead of reading the letter.” ~Unknown

It’s 3 a.m. I’m lying in the dark, planning my own funeral.

Not because anything is wrong. My family is safe. There is no emergency. But my brain has decided, with complete confidence, that the headache I had this afternoon is something fatal. I am already thinking about who will come. Who will cry. Who will move on faster than I’d like.

An hour earlier, the same brain decided my career was ending. I have a presentation tomorrow—and …

How I Stopped Overexplaining and Found Calm in Conflict

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“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” ~Viktor Frankl

For a while, I forgot about that space.

When conflict entered my life—first with my employer, then with my insurance company—I didn’t react explosively. I didn’t fire off reckless emails.

I did something that felt far more reasonable.

I built arguments.

I constructed careful, layered explanations. I mapped policy references, contextual details, and logical connections. I laid out what felt like a complete reticulum of ideas in my defense. If I could make my case airtight, I believed, it would …

Trust Future You

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A Simple Practice That’s Keeping Me Out of Catastrophic Thinking

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“Hope is not a prediction. It is the choice to believe something good is possible before we have proof.”

For most of my life, I lived with an internal alarm system that never turned off. I expected disaster around every corner—financial collapse, professional failure, health crises, humiliation, and loss. Catastrophic thinking wasn’t just a habit; it felt like responsibility. It felt like vigilance. It felt like survival.

As a documentary filmmaker, anticipating the unexpected is part of the job. We learn to obsess over what could go wrong—equipment failures, weather shifts, emotional volatility, permissions falling apart, safety concerns, or a

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The Moment That Brought Me Hope When Life Felt Joyless

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“If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.” ~Buddha

There are seasons when life feels stripped of joy, when hope seems far away, unreachable, or unreal. Seasons when you wake up already exhausted, and it feels like there’s nothing soft left in the world—no beauty, no connection, nothing to rest in. I’ve been living in that season lately.

I’m losing my vision to macular degeneration. I’m a caregiver for my ninety-six-year-old mother. I’m navigating disability, financial strain, and the feeling that the future is shrinking instead of widening. Most days, I move …

The Beauty in Brokenness: Why Your Scars Make You Worthy

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“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ~Rumi

On July 2, 2009, my life shattered with three words: “He is gone.”

I thought my friend meant my love was away on a camping trip, but no. She meant he was gone, as in forever.

My stomach knotted and my breath stopped. My body was reacting to the gravity of the truth before my mind could fully process it. The man I loved more than life itself never came back from his camping trip, and in many ways, neither did I.

My heart broke in a million …

Finding Peace When You Don’t Know What Comes Next

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“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.” ~Eckhart Tolle

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the kind of person who plans everything.

My calendar was color-coded, my to-do lists perfectly alphabetized, and I could tell you what I’d be doing six months from now almost down to the hour.

I thought control meant safety. If I could organize my world tightly enough, maybe nothing bad would happen.

For a long time, that illusion worked. I graduated near the top of my class, got a good job, and built …

Why the Breath Is More Powerful Than Willpower in Addiction Recovery

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“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” ~Amit Ray

I don’t remember the moment I decided I wanted to live again. I just remember the breath that made it possible.

Three weeks earlier, I had been lying in a hospital bed, my liver failing at the age of thirty-six after years of drinking. I knew I wouldn’t survive another relapse; yet the day I was released, I went straight to the liquor store. Unsurprisingly, I ended up back in rehab—completely exhausted, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I wasn’t looking for …

Break the Cycle: How to Heal the Patterns You Didn’t Choose

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“We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” ~Native American Proverb

For years, I blamed my parents for my anxiety, my defensiveness, and my need to be right. Then I learned they inherited the same patterns from their parents. And theirs before them.

This wasn’t about blame. It was about breaking a cycle nobody chose.

The Stutter That Taught Me Everything

As a teenager, I developed a stutter. Not just occasional hesitation—paralyzing anxiety about speaking.

I’d anticipate making mistakes when reading aloud. Starting conversations felt like walking through a minefield. The fear of stuttering …

How Menopause Exposed the Hidden Trauma I Spent Years Ignoring

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“There is no way to be whole without first embracing our brokenness. Wounds transform us, if we let them.” ~Sue Monk Kidd

Menopause flagged up everything unresolved, unmet, and unchallenged and asked me to meet it with grace.

I’m not saying it was an overnight thing—more like a ten-year process of discovery, rollercoaster style. One of those “strap yourself in, no brakes, no seatbelt, possibly no survival” rides.

If I’m honest, the process is still unfolding, but with less “aaaaggggghhhhh” and more “oh.”

Having mentally swapped Nemesis Inferno for It’s a Small World, I can now look back with

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How to Calm Anxiety That’s Rooted in Childhood Wounds

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“Anxiety is a response to a nervous system that learned early on it had to protect itself.” ~Dr. Hilary Jacobs Hendel

Anxiety shaped much of my life—how I showed up, how I held myself back, and how I connected with others. For years, I didn’t even know what it was. I just knew the pounding heart, the tight chest, the trembling hands. I knew the shame that followed every “failure,” big or small, and the fear I would never be enough.

For a long time, I thought I was the problem. But anxiety isn’t a moral failing. It’s a part …

Relief from Relentless Thoughts: Reclaiming My Mind from OCD

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“Don’t believe everything you hear—even in your own mind.” – Daniel G. Amen

This quote might sound like something you’d read on a coffee mug or an Instagram quote slide. But when your own mind is feeding you a 24/7 stream of terrifying, intrusive thoughts? That little phrase becomes a survival strategy.

Sure, I have lots of strategies now. But they weren’t born from a gentle spiritual awakening or a peaceful walk in the woods. They were born out of a relentless, knock-down, drag-out fight with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). A fight that started when I was a kid and stole …

6 Simple Things I Do When Life Feels Completely Overwhelming

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“You can’t calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass.” ~Timber Hawkeye

Overwhelm doesn’t always knock politely. Sometimes it crashes into my day like an unexpected storm—suddenly I can’t think straight, and everything feels urgent, impossible, and too loud. One minute I’m fine, the next I’m spiraling in my head, convinced I’m falling behind on everything and failing everyone.

If you’ve ever sat frozen in your car in the grocery store parking lot, staring blankly at a to-do list that now feels like a personal attack, you’re not alone.

Here are …

Lessons from a Former Overthinker: How to Start Really Living

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“Rule your mind, or it will rule you.” ~Buddha

I used to be trapped in a cycle of overthinking, replaying past mistakes, worrying about the future, and mentally holding onto every thought, just as I physically held onto old clothes, books, and my child’s outgrown toys.

The fear of letting go—whether of physical items or persistent thoughts—felt overwhelming. But I didn’t realize that this habit of mental hoarding was keeping me stuck in place.

The Anxiety of Letting Go—My Last Day of School

One of my earliest experiences with mental hoarding happened on my last day …

How to Escape Cycles of Panic, Overwhelm and Dread

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“Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.” ~Bessel A. van der Kolk

It’s early morning, and I wake with an intense sensation of foreboding. I say wake up, but really, it’s just coming fully into consciousness, as I’ve been semi-conscious all night. Fitfully tossing and turning, a deep anxiety gnawing at my chest.

My mind has been flipping back and forth—across different subjects, even different times, collecting insurmountable evidence that my life is going …

How to Reconnect with Your Higher Self for Clarity and Direction

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“Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to the heart, it knows.” ~Native American Wisdom

Have you ever felt stuck? Stuck in a business you’ve lost passion for, a job you no longer enjoy, a relationship that no longer fulfills you, or simply stuck in indecision about how to move forward in life?

That feeling of “stuck-ness” often leads to anxiety, fear, and even shame. I understand these feelings well.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, my life turned upside down—as it did for many. I was the founder and executive director …