I've been dealing with anxiety for the past seven years, but it wasn't until six months ago that I decided to seriously do something about it. It had gotten to such a point that I couldn't function on a day to day basis. Everything scared me. It's like I was walking through a nightmare, waiting for something to get me, feeling the dread and weight of some unnameable impending doom. I started therapy. Things were immediately better. And then they were immediately worse. Anxiety is this strange shape shifter that latches on to whatever it can to stay alive in your mind. It doesn’t matter what it is; illness, loneliness, insanity, phone calls, speaking, small spaces, meetings, even existence itself. Once you conquer one issue, it grabs onto another. My anxiety has found a way to make a problem out of everything, and out of nothing. I am constantly looking to solve some nonexistent problem that my mind has created. As much as I’m being honest, I have to be even more honest and tell you how much better things are now. Therapy has helped me SO MUCH. I cannot explain to you how much it has helped. I am so much stronger now than I’ve ever been. Therapy is something people think is a nice luxury: getting to lay on a couch and complain about all the little dramas in your life. People don’t understand how therapy is a necessity and is the hardest work you’ll ever do. It requires everything of you. You are never not working on your therapy, because you’re never not thinking, feeling, existing. If nothing else, I am so proud of myself for being strong enough to stick with this process and know that I am better than this monster that happens to share the same mind that I do. To everyone out there reading this, know there is always hope and that you are so much stronger than you could ever possibly imagine. You have all the courage, potential, will power, and determination to move through whatever it is that you are dealt with.