The seemingly inherent negativity of the disorder can actually be the most positive experience of our life. How many other people are given such an opportunity! The disorder has done so much of the hard work for us. It has stripped away the image of who we thought we should be, and has returned us to the basis of who we could be.
Life isn’t just about growing up, having a career, getting married, having children and so on. These are things we do during life, but they are not life. Life is continual evolution and development.
Our need to be in control of ourselves and our environment is our unconscious effort to try to stop this change. Although there are many external changes in our life, we fight to control any internal changes and development of ourselves. We need to be in control to keep the image we have, and the image other people have, of ourselves. We haven’t been able to let our image change in case it meant we did not meet the expectations of other people. We are now paying dearly for this.
Our continual suppression of self means we have blocked the ongoing development of our self. Although we have always wanted to be able to express and develop our self, we have never been willing to take the risk. How many times have we ignored the call to self, or not heard its almost silent whisperings? This time it is not whispering. It is shouting.
Anxiety disorders are destructive. They tear away the very fabric of our whole being. They destroy our way of life. The attacks and the anxiety terrify us sometimes to the extent that normal everyday living is non-existent. Yet we do not recognise in this destruction an equally positive force. The destruction can be a positive turning point in becoming our real self.
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