I just wanted to let you know I appreciated this:
Obviously, this is obvious, but I thought it in a different way than I usually do, which was not so much that, "I can't go to this because I have anxiety," but instead I thought, "I WANT to go to this, and I have anxiety that is trying to stop me."
I think it is an important and powerful difference because in the first instance you are identifying with the anxiety: the anxiety
is you, what it wants you want. You are letting the anxiety define you, and in so doing you give it undo power. In the second instance, anxiety becomes something you are dealing with, but not something that is the core of who you are. You are not the anxiety, the anxiety is merely something you feel - it is real, it is potent, but it is no longer everything. You have desires and concerns and a life and a self that are beyond it. And I think making that mental shift is important in being able to reclaim your life, and make the change from anxiety being something that controls your life to being something you are able to live meaningfully with.
Anyway, you experience/epiphany has helped me understand where my own negative thinking has come from, and what gives it power. I have been struggling with anxiety and insecurity recently - I have with varying degrees my whole life, but lately the negativity and self-laceration has become especially potent and devastating, and I have been at a loss to explain how/why my fluctuating baseline insecurity has become so out of control, and you've helped be understand the mechanism behind it. I have been identifying more readily and fervently with every negative thought I have about myself until it is all I have see/remember.
Alright, enough rambling from me!
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon/lol.gif)