Anxiety, depression, and anger all share a common “root”.  This root is “control”.  There is always an element of control in all three of these types of suffering.

I often discuss these three conditions as a pyramid.  Anxiety, depression, and anger all feed off of one another.  Rarely will a person have just one and not at least one other.  Some people get to experience all three at times, and varying degrees.

Anxiety is always a scary “what if” scenario in the future, and we try to control the future.  Depression is always based on some kind of regret of the past, and we try to control the past.  Anger is always an attempt to manipulate a situation in the present, out of some kind of fear, and we try to control the situation.

When I meet a person who is suffering from both anxiety and depression, they typically feel confused by this.  Or even frightened that they have something especially wrong with them because they are experiencing two different types of suffering.  There is nothing strange or odd about a person experiencing two disorders at the same time.

The approach to recovery for anxiety, depression, and anger is all the same.  It is learning to change our response to our trigger.  Also learning to accept that we cannot control anything.

We cannot go back in time and change past events.  I’ve often challenged members of my support group to go back in time just 10 seconds.  Go back 10 seconds and let’s just do that little time over again.  Obviously, we cannot do that.  So we have to pay attention to our intent to control past events.  We have to accept this and learn to leave the past alone.  This doesn’t mean that we have to like what happened in the past, but accept that it cannot be changed.

Likewise, we cannot go into the future in any way to change or control future situations.  The future hasn’t even happened yet.  And what’s interesting to me is that we all think we can predict the future.  Our anxious thinking takes past fear and projects it into the future, and we believe we know exactly what will happen.  Most of the time we could not be more wrong.  Learn to accept that we cannot change or control the future in any way.

The same thing goes for anger.  Typically anger involves another person or event that could be here in the present moment.  We cannot control another person or any event for that matter.  People say and do what they want, and whether or not we agree with them, we have no power or influence over their decisions.  And that’s ok.  We cannot control them, but we can walk away or choose to separate ourselves from them.

Acceptance that we the only thing we have control over is ourselves.  Right now!  That’s all.  There is no past and there is no future.  Right here, right now is really all we have.  And this is enough.  We do not need anything else.

However, we need to make the best out of today.  The choices we make.  The effort we put into recovery.  The decisions we make.  The attention we put into self-care.  All this can only be done today.  Do not allow a day to go by without putting out effort and attention to care for yourself and work on creating a recovery for yourself.

Remember, the future is not yet written.  The future is created by the effort you put out today.  Keep yourself a priority in your life and create the future you desire.