Negative emotions can feel like a trap we can’t escape from, like an illness we don’t know how to cure, like a bad dream we can’t wake up from.  We learn along the way to rely on whatever strategies we can to dull the pain even for a short time and can end up spending our lives running from ourselves.

The most profound yet simple thing I have learned about anxiety is that it will pass. There are times when I fixate on the anxiety, believing that it means that there is something wrong with me or my life, believing that it means that I will be miserable forever or prevented from living the life I want to live. There are times I try to push it away, times I try to hide from it, believing that the only way I can be happy, the only way I can be okay, is by pretending it isn’t there. But all these things only feed it, only teach me that I need to be afraid.