It’s not the end of the month, but when I come across something helpful, there’s no need to wait to publish it. Today I’m proud to offer another guest post written by Bethany McLaughlin. Bethany is one of the admins in my Facebook group. She has a knack for teaching lessons based on her own recovery experiences. This is a really good one.
“Recovery.” The word implies restoration to a former state. But what if you have no recollection of a time when anxiety wasn’t your constant, familiar companion? Without a reference point, is recovery possible?
While panic attacks fueled by fear of my own body kicked off a new era of anxiety in my 30’s, I had been intimately acquainted with worry, dread, self doubt, overthinking, and poor tolerance of uncertainty—just some of a colorful cast of anxious characters—for as long as I could remember. In fact, as I progressed in my recovery, I accidentally discovered that a number of my traits and behaviors which I had assumed were fixtures of my personality actually stemmed from anxiety. I wasn’t actively targeting all of these things through exposure, but as I practiced implementing recovery principles, and as I let go of treating all of my thoughts as equally worthy of attention, I naturally began questioning and abandoning old habits. I also found quiet spaces where I used to have ominous thoughts and feelings that prompted me to avoid, avoid, avoid.
What was this? Where did those parts of me go?
They weren’t really parts of me. I’m always me. Wherever I go, there I am. Whatever I do, I’m the one who’s doing it and experiencing it. I don’t have to know what it looks like or feels like to live tomorrow before I live it, and I didn’t have to know what recovery looked or felt like before I recovered. Really, this is all of life. It’s common to use the example of a baby learning to walk when describing that state of vulnerability in the face of a fresh experience, and that’s because it’s where we all begin, and honestly, how we live moment to moment whether we are actively aware of it or not. When we haven’t done something before, we don’t have past experience to draw from—not for that specific thing. Before we try a new food we’ve never eaten before, we don’t know what it’s going to taste like. Before we meet a new person, we have no idea what they’ll be like. The scenarios are endless. We can ask other people what their experience has been, we can research, and we can think about what those things might be like, but how do we find out for ourselves? Only by direct experience.
Anxiety seeks solace through attempting to arrive at a certain (and in no way uncertain) destination without embarking on the actual journey to get there. Anxiety doesn’t want to learn. Anxiety wants to know future outcomes and dwell in a state of perpetual arrival. Recovery, on the other hand, is an unfolding series of experiences that bring lasting lessons of competency and confidence through the very doing of them.
What will a recovered you look like? What will a recovered life look like? That's what you get to find out, and you can make it look however you want... by doing it.
Have you listened to this week’s episode of The Anxious Truth podcast? Check it out out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or my website and YouTube channel.
181. Recovery Is Discovery By Doing