When I develop anxiety (which I don’t really claim or speak into existence, but for the purpose of this post I am speaking in present tense) I had no idea what it was. I thought I had something physically wrong with me. The truth is I have been headed down the road towards anxiety all my life. I was always a worry wart that tried to control all future results and hung onto past failures and disappointments. I was asking for some type of psychological issue with this type of mindset.

There are different levels that I would go through before I reached a full blown attack. Self-awareness is critical because you need to know your triggers. This is why these concepts have been so helpful to me, they make me more aware of my thoughts, feelings and behaviors so that I can minimize the tension I feel and avoid further symptoms or anxiety.  Here are the top three things that I have learned to minimize the effects of anxiety.

I am on a never-ending journey of self-reflection, self-correction, trust and forgiveness. There was a time when my therapist asked me if I felt like I ever needed forgiveness and guess what I said…NO! Can you believe that? Well, neither could she and her facial expression when I answered the question made me go deep with myself and examine where my answer came from. The result of my analysis was that my answer came from a superficial level of thinking that since I never intentionally wronged anyone, I didn’t need to be forgiven for anything which isn’t entirely true. Just because I didn’t perceive my words or actions to be hurtful or rude didn’t mean that they weren’t and might have warranted forgiveness of me.