I’m not a professional. Everything I share comes from personal experience.
Over the past few years, mental health has become something I care deeply about, and not just understanding it, but actually learning how to work through it. When I started opening up about my struggles, I realized how many people are going through similar things in silence. It can feel incredibly lonely, even when you’re surrounded by others. But the truth is – you’re not alone.
What you’ve been through doesn’t define who you are. What matters is how you choose to deal with it.
For me, learning how to regulate my nervous system was a game-changer. It wasn’t because suddenly everything got better, it was because I finally started to understand what was happening inside me.
It didn’t happen overnight, and there wasn’t one thing that fixed everything. I kept looking for that one answer. One method that would make it all go away. But nothing worked the same way twice, and that’s when I started realizing it might not be that simple.
When anxiety becomes your normal
Looking back, everything started to shift after my first therapy session. It wasn’t because the session was revolutionary or groundbreaking – it was because it made me feel seen. Anxiety was so deeply rooted in me for so long that it made me question myself. How is everyone else functioning normally? Are they feeling this too and just handling it better? Or am I just weaker?
When something becomes your normal, you stop questioning it, and you can’t solve something you don’t fully see. Therapy helped me recognize it, but I still felt stuck.
If I accept the diagnosis, does that mean I’ll always live with it?
But if I ignore it, am I just avoiding it?
How do you heal from something you don’t acknowledge?
That’s when I started digging deeper.
Trying to fix what I didn’t understand
I went into research mode on what anxiety really is. According to the American Psychological Association, anxiety is an emotion characterized by apprehension and somatic symptoms of tension in which an individual anticipates impending danger, catastrophe, or misfortune. Okay, I know it’s a feeling, but how do you create a feeling? By thoughts? If that’s true, does that mean that if I can change the thoughts, I can change the feelings?
And if I can change the feeling, can I change the anxiety?
Okay then, I’ll change my thoughts, which will change my feelings, which will make anxiety go away. On paper, this sounds easy. But, how do you change your thoughts? Most of my thoughts were happening automatically, and I wasn’t even aware of them.
I was always focused on what was in front of me, what I had to do, what was next. I rarely stopped to ask what was happening inside me.
I remember when I was applying for jobs. Every time I opened an application, I felt close to a panic attack. It didn’t make sense. Most people are stressed about not hearing back, and I was struggling just to press “send.” So I stopped and asked myself – what am I actually thinking right now? If they hire me, they’ll see I’m not good enough.
The shift from thoughts to beliefs
At first, I tried to change the thought. I am good enough. I would say to myself, but nothing changed. I still felt the same. That’s when I realized something important – thoughts don’t come from nowhere. So where were mine coming from? They didn’t feel random. And that’s when I started questioning what I actually believed about myself.
Looking back, I realized I was going through the same process over and over again without even knowing it.
First, I noticed how I felt.
Then I started paying attention to the thoughts behind it.
Then I questioned where those thoughts were coming from.
And only then could I start changing anything.
Trying to change my thoughts alone never worked. Because the thoughts weren’t the root, the belief was. Somewhere inside me, there was a part that truly believed I wasn’t enough. And as long as that belief stayed the same, nothing on the surface was going to change.
When I started working on those beliefs, not just the thoughts, that’s when I finally felt a shift. Not instantly, but it was noticeable. It didn’t change everything overnight, but it changed the way I saw myself, and that slowly started changing everything else.
I stopped trying to fix what was on the surface and started understanding what was underneath it. And that’s where things actually started to shift.
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