I’m seeing more and more women who are coming into my free Facebook community state that anxiety is their #1 struggle. So I wanted to ask you ~ how does Anxiety show up for you if it’s something you experience?
My own experience of anxiety appeared to start following my dad and brother’s accident in 1993, which resulted in the death of my younger brother and the severe disability of my father.
I was diagnosed as having complex post-traumatic stress disorder which manifested as (and returned following the death of my father in 2016):
1. Fear of motorbikes
2. Flashbacks of the accident and the aftermath of what happened in the months following.
3. Insomnia
4. Nightmares
5. My hair fell out.
6. I started picking my face.
7. Noise was something I didn’t feel I could bear.
8. I didn’t want to see or talk to anyone.
9. I found it very difficult to read books or concentrate for any length of time.
As the years went by I lived with chronic anxiety which manifested as:
1. A need to control everything in my life, from timings; to others people’s wellbeing; to the food I ate; To the time it was eaten; to the exercise that I did; to where the plates and cutlery got put away; to how food was placed on the supermarket trolley, conveyer belt and then into the bags; to sleep – how much I got – if I didn’t get a sleep during the day I was incredibly anxious and uptight.
2. I lived in a perpetual state of anxiety that something would happen to my father or son and constantly played out “worse case” scenarios in my head.
3. I wouldn’t let anyone else drive me unless it was my sister
4. I worried about the future, about money, about what other people thought of me
To manage all of the above (which I perceived as normal)
1. I was a workaholic
2. I took drugs and drank alcohol
3. I exercised for 3-4 hours a day. Sometimes more.
4. I went thru many binge-starve cycles
5. I constantly focused on what I thought was wrong with me physically, and as a human being.
6. I was constantly looking for a way out.
7. I believed everyone I loved would die and was constantly playing out scenarios where this would happen
8. I had CBT, Psychotherapy and trained in many different psychology modalities to understand my state of mind.
It wasn’t until I came across a new paradigm in psychology that things really started to shift for me and I began to understand how anxious I had become and how small I had made my world.
I’d like to share this with anyone who has experienced any form of anxious thinking – thus I’d like to offer you the chance to have a chat with me to show you how you can alleviate anxiety in an easier way than you can imagine.
Therefore, if anxiety or anxious thinking is something experience, please let me know in the comments below how this affects your life and what you have tried to overcome this.
Do you have:
- money anxiety?
- Health anxiety?
- Death anxiety?
- Social anxiety?
- Imposter syndrome?
- Weight anxiety?
- Fear of something happening to your kids?
Let me know how it manifests for you and if you have any “habits of coping” on top of it that you’d rather not have.
Do you have any physical symptoms? Etc
Get in touch or book your appointment so I show you how freedom is closer than you think
Love, Charli x
