People often come to me asking what the meaning of life is.  What is the purpose of our suffering with anxiety disorders?  They feel as if they can just learn the secret to life than their suffering would disappear.

I do not pretend to have the answer as to what is the meaning of life.

But, I can tell you that knowing it or not knowing it, doesn’t matter either way!

I went through this period myself, of wanting to figure out the deepest secrets to our existence.  I researched various religions, many different types of philosophy and even looked at ancient cultures and their beliefs.  I spent many hours in the pursuit of uncovering the secret to life.  All in an effort to figure out why I was suffering from anxiety disorders.

I am sorry to report that I did not uncover any great knowledge or wisdom.  I would not accept a belief system as an answer to my suffering.  There is no definitive understanding of anxiety disorders within the medical community.  I learned that it is believed to be that anxiety disorders, as well as other forms of suffering and “control”, have been around for thousands of years.

After a while of not coming up with any answers, and having much frustration, I finally was able to look at things from a different point of view.  I accepted the idea that there are no secrets, or special understand of anxiety disorders, and that it’s nothing new to human existence.

In one way I felt comforted in knowing that anxiety disorders have been around for a very long time.  Knowing this allowed me to accept that I was not different in any way.  Anxiety disorders make us feel isolated, and for a period of time, I thought I was the only one ever to feel the way that I did.  This could not be further from the truth.

Then the teachings I learned during my own recovery started making more sense to me, all humans have anxiety.  Anxiety itself is a natural part of who we are as a species.  Anxiety is the main component of our natural self-defense system.  It assesses danger and is the trigger for the fight or flight mechanism.  Having anxiety is what has allowed humans to continue to exist.  Without anxiety, we never would have made it out of the ice age.

The trouble starts when anxiety assigns danger to a non-dangerous situation.  We look at a particular situation as dangerous and this produces a response of fear in us.  Fear can manifest itself differently based on individual persons own experiences.  Fear can be classified as worry or nervousness, all the way up to panic disorder.  Fear can control our behavior, make us avoid situations and even cause us to live with obsessive, fearful thoughts throughout the entire day.  It is impossible to fully understand the full spectrum of how anxiety disorders manifest or how they affect an individual.

My counselor was very quick to say that it doesn’t matter what happened yesterday, and there is no way to predict what is going to happen tomorrow.  This is actually a very profound teaching my counselor was sharing with me.

Yesterday is only but a memory.  We cannot go back in time to change anything, its over.  Yesterday and its events only live within our memory.  What’s interesting is that our memory which is diluted with fear is what we use to think of yesterday.  Our actual memory is not exactly accurate of past events.  Yes, we can remember mostly what happened, but when remembering things through emotions, the actual memory is tainted and changed as we want it to.  If we were experiencing higher levels of anxiety then our memory will be more negative.  If we had a happy day then our memory will be more positive.  Either way, our memory is tainted by emotion.

Tomorrow is not here yet.  Actually, tomorrow doesn’t even exist yet.  In our minds we create an image of what tomorrow is; complete with anxiety, troubles and all the negative things in our life we experience today, we project into what we think tomorrow will be.  In reality, we have no idea what tomorrow will be.  Unfortunately, when we suffer from anxiety we will always look to the future with anxiety involved in our thoughts.

I often speak of working “today”.  Today is all we have.  What we did yesterday is gone, and what we plan on doing tomorrow doesn’t really make a difference.  Today is the only opportunity we have to make a change in our lives.  Today is the only place we exist in reality.  Do your work today.  Make sure you take advantage of the opportunity that today presents.

Anxiety disorders and recovery as a whole are not so complicated.  There is no secret or message from the universe.  Understanding our anxiety disorders and creating recovery is found in the day to day basics of our life.  It’s actually quite small, and very simple in comparison to what we think it should be.  Our anxiety disorders seem like they are larger than life, they consume our lives, so we believe they are of universal proportions.  This is an illusion.

I was able to create recovery without discovering any secret of the universe.  So has my counselor, and many others before me.  And I know many people that have created recovery after me.  None of them found any secret.  If we can do it, so can you!

Never give up!  Persistence!