I have terrible anxiety. I don’t know why I feel this. That’s the thing. It’s for no reason.

What feelings arise? 

I hate feeling so nervous all the time and anxious all the time. I’m afraid of failing. I get anxiety for school, social situations, and literally anything. I feel like it will never go away.

It makes me resentful of my own self because I hate feeling anxious. It makes me feel pathetic and vulnerable and I hate talking about it because it makes me feel worse. I don’t know how else to describe how it makes me feel besides awful.

When I think about what hurts inside of me, it’s failure. I don’t want to fail because it can be hard to come back from it. I start again and know that failure can teach you how to deal with disappointment better.

How does it affect you?

The anxiety is starting to control my life and making me physically ill on more than one occasion.

Failing makes me lose confidence.

Besides making me physically ill, I get nauseous and have to take meds to avoid throwing up, my anxiety limits what I do in my life. It makes me avoid things like public speaking, questionable (in my mind) social situations, and limit other activities that I would actually want to do. It also leads to more procrastination, because I avoid doing things that make me anxious for as long as possible.

I will never think of failing as strength, but I do think I can learn/grow with it. 

What is your part?

I am not helping myself get past this. Reacting to anxiety in any way will make it worse. The best way for me to respond, personally, is to observe what is around me.

What are you learning about yourself, others, the situation?

I think I’ve learned that my anxiety probably stems from the pressure to be perfect and that I am the only one who can alleviate that pressure from myself.

What can you shift or turn around in your beliefs, thinking, words, or actions?

I don’t know. I’ve tried therapy and holistic meds. It hasn’t helped.

I read that Samuel Beckett said, “Fail again. Fail better.” You can learn from failure. 

How will you work with your difficulty?

I choose to react angrily and feel helpless and upset, rather than look at myself to fix the problem.

What is this difficulty teaching you?

Hating myself for having anxiety won’t make it go away.

16 years