Lessons from my Anxiety phase

I got into this phase primarily because I was scared of overdoing things/success. When I got out of it, these were the things I realized. For a long while I projected the same solutions to my friends with anxiety, but I now realize that no 2 people go through the exact same issues, hence it is important to find out your own cause and effect.

1. Cross culture crisis/ Environment-  Blogging about culture differences, the education system and academics/ achievement related things really channelizes the same. The recipe “How I should’ve dealt with my cross-culture crisis” truly helped me figure out what I should’ve done at that time.
2. Self punishing– Being scared of my feelings for so long and making too many rules for myself hence, I realized that the only thing I have to ever forbid myself from doing is punishing myself. Rest- nostalgia, fear etc. is absolutely normal. So I have vowed to never punish myself, but go back to normal/ being myself after rectifying the mistake. The rest of the lessons just enhance the quality of my life,-
3. Spirituality- I always wanted to do meditation, be really joyous and feel truly in control of my inner self but didn’t have a medium to be consistent with these habits. With my Buddhist practice, I found this self since long ago all my positive beliefs had also arisen from a quote shared by someone from this practice only.
4. Hypochondria– I for a long time thought and believed that I have stress/take a lot of stress (and a part of me wanted to, to achieve results) so I actually started developing that stress/anxiety. Then I was convinced I had it and even pretended/exaggerated my symptoms to justify why I need help which was all a huge web. I was over-empathizing with people who had anxiety and was amused by the whole concept of mental illness as well.
5. Channelizing my empathy– I had a lot of repressed empathy in me for other people because I always wanted to give hope to people. I can now channelize through my blog (by sharing personal growth recipes) and even engage in community service for the same rather than just preach to people and get offended by differing opinions.
6. Grudges, expression and closure– I shouldn’t keep grudges against others for my own sake, even if they’ve been horrible to me or have a lot of vices. I should take my time with being angry at them but eventually either talk it out or drop it. These are past blockages that would ruin my present experience. However, if there are feelings that I can’t express or share because they are such (too different for others to understand, too bitter), I should identify what is is, write it down, google, seek a solution or talk to other people about it. And having a fight is also not always a bad thing as long as it gets the anger out and vented up feelings out. The biggest reason why this is important is that I can’t expect my friends to know who I am/how I feel till I don’t tell them what I’m going through. And later, if/when I burst like a volcano, I can’t blame them for not being there for me in the past.
7. Emotional intelligence- I should be able to identify what’s bothering me & express/ cope with that. I shouldn’t be afraid of being sad or having negative emotions and experience those feelings in the moment instead. I should have faith in my coping abilities and allow myself to experience all my feelings so as to be able to make sound decisions. I can’t expect myself to be ecstatically happy (sugar coating) while/despite keeping grudges and not dealing with how I feel.
8. Work and hobbies- It’s okay if I don’t enjoy certain things that I earlier enjoyed, that just means that I’ll enjoy other things now and there’s a new time coming my way that I should embrace. And I shouldn’t stop doing things I want to in the present just because I’m scared of how I did them before.  I even wrote a recipe about lost secret shifters and reasons why I couldn’t enjoy the things I earlier enjoyed to figure stuff out.
9. Finding answers- I can’t get all the answers to my questions immediately, therefore I should have patience to be able to see the bigger picture and give it time. As the book The secret says, you can even attract answers. And I can’t keep rationalizing and thinking about what the bigger picture is either because there’s only so much that my brain can see or come up with at a particular time. Of course exercises like writing and chanting also help with the same.
10. Commitment- Make sure the person you’re dating is someone who you have enough in common with, can share your feelings with, be yourself around, they know who you are and you enter the relationship with enough emotional confidence ( I.e that you’re in a stable enough state in your life to be in a relationship)

More specific lessons that I’ve learnt about how to not only solve my problems but emerge victorious in them are under “things I didn’t know before reading the secret”, “things I didn’t know before starting my Buddhist practice” etc.