By Amy Moore, Content Team Contributor

Anxiety is not linear. And, therefore, the process of making peace with anxiety will also not be linear. This is a notion that I have struggled with for a long time because I always just wanted to feel better. I wanted to be able to snap my fingers and for my anxiety to just be gone. Over the years, I have discovered time and time again that this wish is unrealistic.

I like to describe it as ‘making peace with anxiety’ because I generally dislike the notion of having to fight or struggle with anxiety; for me, it has always been physically and mentally exhausting to interpret anxiety as something that I needed to struggle against or defeat.  And so, recently, I’ve started to think of anxiety as something I need to make peace with, to understand that it is not there to hurt me; if anything, anxiety is there as a protection, it just sometimes gets a little overprotective, and that’s when it gets in the way of living life, which is what I do not want. Anxiety has been a core part of my life for the last nine years, and so attempting to dismantle even the unconscious defence strategies that I have built in my mind has been difficult to say the least. There have been ups and downs, high highs and low lows, but I can finally say that, in recent months, there are definitely more good days than bad days. But the art of persevering has not been an easy one to master.

The good days are good. I can compartmentalise anxiety to the extent that I can forget that it’s even there. I look at these days as a huge achievement and that all the hard work has paid off. Some days, having this mindset feels so easy, so simple. I feel as though I could do anything and that I’ve come so far from the person who once could not even leave the house without having a panic attack. I can go out with my friends, I can go out for a meal, I can drive to somewhere I’ve never been before. These things that now seem so simple, but that used to seem so far out of reach for me, have become my daily life. It’s during these times that I vow that I am getting better and that I can feel as though I can finally move on.

And then come the days where it feels hard to remember any progress that I felt I had made. It happened recently at university when I had a panic attack during a presentation. I remember thinking that I’d made a fool of myself and that everyone had noticed and that all that progress I thought I had made was all gone and that I was back at the beginning once again. I could physically feel how I unconsciously fell into my old defence mechanisms, talking faster so that I could get to the end of my powerpoint and I could just sit down and finally everyone would stop looking at me. I wanted to run home and hide in my room, and I felt as though I was back at the very beginning, where public speaking seemed impossible. But, instead of heading home and thinking too much about it, instead, I went and treated myself to an overpriced coffee and a muffin. I just took twenty minutes to breathe.

I had to remind myself that just a week previously I’d managed to get on a train and go into a busy city to go to the theatre, and that had been such an achievement that even six months ago, I never could have done. One setback did not diminish the fact that I had achieved that. Sometimes it helps to just put things into perspective, to acknowledge the progress, the setbacks, and then to move forwards. I have been guilty of dwelling on what I perceived as my own failures on this journey to getting my life back from anxiety, but they are not failures, and no one should see them as such. I had to look at it differently. How great was it that I stood up to do that presentation feeling incredible? It was the first time that I could ever remember going into a presentation with some degree of confidence. It may not have gone the way that I wanted, but at least I hadn’t been riddled with anxiety beforehand. And for me, that was an achievement.

I think it’s important to acknowledge that these things will not be a straight path all the time. It’s normal to have good days and bad days. But, it is also important to not let the bad days overshadow the good days. Sure, sometimes it may feel as though you’ve taken three steps back in a single day, but that does not diminish the progress that you’ve already made. Anxiety is so difficult because it can feel all-encompassing, in your mind and in physical symptoms, it can be so isolating on the bad days that the good days feel like an impossible dream. But, what I have learned is that the good days and the bad days go hand-in-hand. Progress is not linear, but when you take a step back to look at the bigger picture, perhaps you’ll see that you’ve come further than you had ever imagined was possible.