“In some ways I believe that my anxiety has been my greatest gift to me”
Since my childhood I have gone through waves (that feel like floods) of anxiety that prevent me from enjoying my life. My daily experience was filled with pervasive panic that caused burning gusts of wind to roar through my chest. At times, it was hard for me to find meaning in my life. There were phases of being confined to my couch watching Netflix and oversleeping. At the core of this anxiety was my belief that life was devoid of inherent meaning. I struggled to find a reason for my existence and could not understand why I should exert effort to achieve goals.
One of the worst parts of believing that life has no meaning is that you spend your life in a sort of stasis. You are unable to make an effort to grow personally because you persuade yourself that it is not worth the effort. This inner conflict of wanting the best for yourself while simultaneously sabotaging any efforts to make progress is a recipe for gridlock. Unfortunately, I believe that we all struggle with apathy to some extent. There is always that convincing whisper that tries to tell us our goals are unattainable, pointless and that they require too much effort. It is the greatest most formidable opponent we encounter on our path to personal success.
I have struggled with this pervasive sense of worry for most of my life. I felt as if the only solution would be to perennially surrender to the tyrannical giant that stood atop my chest. My anxiety reached the one of its many low valleys during my transition from high school to college. This life transition was filled with grave questions of identity and purpose. With no idea who I was or who I was supposed to be, my anxiety had worn me out so thoroughly that I needed to change. I was partying too much, not exercising enough and letting the vicissitudes of my emotions negatively impact my perspective on life. After two years of college, there came a crossroads where my inner voice asked me what path I was to choose. I decided I wanted my life to be different. So I changed it.
I decided to set goals and make an unwavering persistence to achieve them. I had begun to become a good student, but I wanted to raise my standard to unprecedented heights. My first set of goals were the following:
Get a 4.0 GPA
Lose 30 pounds by exercising 5 times a week.
Get a job on campus
Join a club
Get an internship
I devoted myself like a monk to these goals. I attained mentors who had already accomplished them and asked questions. I established relationships with my professors as they provided me guidance through their courses and shared advice on how to attain internships. Attending the gym was the first item on my daily-to-do list . At the end of the semester, I had finally achieved each of the goals. The boost of self-esteem gained from achievement became addicting. This commitment to personal improvement served as a momentous force that continued to gain strength as time progressed. My unquenchable thirst for knowledge provided me with a virtuous renewable source of motivation.
A belief in personal progress is initially what saved me from the depths of despair. Until that time in my life, college had been the only experience of personal accomplishment and happiness. For the first time, I had actually been regarded as, “the smart guy”. I had received an internship at a prestigious company. I truly believed that previous feelings of anxiety would never befall me again. My ego grew so large that it was inevitable for the slightest breeze to send my sense of identity crashing down. I grew so eager to graduate from college and take on the challenges of the real world that I never anticipated any negative emotional state upon graduating. Just when I thought I would feel invincible, there came another dark lasting funk. I had set out on a path of achievement and reached my destination feeling exactly what I was trying to escape from.
I tried the usual tricks: exercise, healthy eating, meditation, and reading all were to no avail. I had never felt more hopeless. After accomplishing what I set out to, I somehow felt a sort of emptiness. Something had to change. I could no longer try to bear this burden alone or I would cause serious emotional harm to myself. The first step was to confide in my family and friends what I was experiencing. My fear of vulnerability made this first step feel more like a leap from one high-rise to another. I had always been apprehensive to share these thoughts as I never wanted to persuade anyone else to adopt my mindset. What I experienced upon telling each of my loved ones genuinely shocked me. The warmth, understanding and love made me realize how ignorant and stubborn I had been to hide behind a façade of bravado for so long. My insistence on enduring my emotional struggle alone proved nothing. In order to feel any sort of lasting peace, I needed to relinquish my desire for control.
My dedication to achievement was an attempt to permanently eradicate any anxiety of living a meaningless life. I think we habitually wish the negative circumstances of our life away and think that they imprison us to a life of discontent. This mindset serves as an impediment to our chance at a happy life. If this trait is as much a part of you as your limbs, what good does it do to wish it away and hold it in disdain? Rather than vigorously fighting against the pain of my anxiety, I had to quell the desire to subdue it by not only accepting it as a part of myself, but by being grateful for it. I do not think that having anxiety is a byproduct of being unintelligent, lazy or purposefully pessimistic. I believe that some of history’s greatest people struggle finding their life's purpose. In some ways I believe that my anxiety has been a great gift to me: it helps me think critically; it provides me with a vast imagination; and it keeps me physically active. Deep down, I know that my anxiety fuels me to live the most meaningful life I can. I am really grateful for my anxiety because anxiety is a part of me and I have learned to like myself.
An antidote to a belief that nothing is worth trying is this: we all invariably endure hardships and change in our lives, it is inextricably linked with the process of living. To recognize that this is just a passing season as you try to find things that bring you joy every day will cause negativity to free you from its white-knuckled-death-grip. In the meantime, turn your focus to relationships and hobbies as you slowly defeat the oppressive beast. Life will return to a state of normalcy and you will feel whole again. The key is to keep improving and having something to strive for even in these moments of apathy. If you do not feel motivated to accomplish your goals but you work like hell anyway, you will look back and solemnly thank yourself for doing your best even when you did not feel like it. I believe that each one of us are heroes in every sense of the word: persisting through external and internal struggles with no expectation of special recognition.
So if you’ve ever been there before and felt a deep absurdity about life, please know that you are not alone. But what I want you to know more than anything is that you do not have to defeat this alone. Please leverage available resources that will help you cope with this feeling. This does not make you weak; if anything it makes you stronger, wiser and more capable of defeating the oppressive cynic that can live inside our heads. Your friends and family love you deeply and will help shoulder your burden.
I hope this post has comforted you if you are going through a personal struggle. Just as the sun rises and falls with the endless stream of passing days, so too shall your struggles subside. Life is a constant cycle of death and rebirth. So consider this post this post a celebration of rebirth and take refuge in the opportunity of new beginnings.
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