How I Began to Cure My Anxiety

The process of beginning to cure anxiety is much simpler than you would think. And it all begins and ends with the mind.

“When your mind starts telling you what you have to do to make everything inside okay, don’t buy into what it’s telling you. The truth is, everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything.” – Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

At sixteen I went on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication after multiple panic attacks, and even a hospitalization. I had extreme anxiety, low self-esteem, and depression that began years beforehand. I spent the next four years on and off different medications, searching for an answer to my anxiety and panic disorder. Until, a visit to the farmer’s market opened my eyes and began my journey inwards.

Five years later I’m happier and healthier than I have ever been. I’ve been off all medications and often have a hard time imagining the person I once was. What we so often don’t realize is that these pills are only a cover up. They mask our symptoms, which can then become even worse, causing us to search for heavier pills, or a different type of medication.

We embark on this journey to find an outward solution, when really the answer is inside.

My solution began after my first visit to a Farmer’s Market in downtown San Diego. I was in awe of all of these naturally happy people – so calm, and carefree. I paused for a moment, and realized that I could be like them too, and that I was like them deep down. And so began my journey into the soul.

From that point forward I promised myself that I didn’t need medication to be happy,
and that I could find another way to calm my extremely loud mind.

I had always loved to read, and so I found myself at the book store. This led to my purchase of the book that began the process of turning my life around – The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer.

I have now read it front to back multiple times, highlighting and taking notes in the margins. After my first time reading through, and after following the steps given, I realized that a shift had already taken place. I could “flip” the way that I was feeling in a situation, simply by using the power of my mind.

The book teaches us to quiet our mind by realizing that we are not the voice inside –
we are the witness of that voice.

And by understanding this, we can completely change our lives. We can learn to ignore the once-powerful ego-driven voice that is there to protect us, but has been trained to over-protect. This voice dictates what we do and what we say at every moment of every day. It uses past experiences to protect us from negative situations that it believes may occur again. But this voice also protects us from situations that could turn out positive. It is the source of our Fear.

And when we learn to conquer our Fear, we can conquer our lives.

The first step that I mastered was noticing the voice. Train yourself to listen to your mind, as often as possible, and you will realize that it speaks a whole lot of nonsense. As Michael Singer put it, we would not want someone following us around all day telling us every bad thing that could happen and arguing the possibilities of our lives next to us – so why do we allow our minds to have such a loud voice and powerful influence over us?

In order to cure any anxiety, we must quiet this voice.

It is the cause of almost all of the problems that we encounter in this life. As Michael Singer wrote, “Try to find the part of you that is capable of noticing that your mind is hyperactive and that your heart is heating up. That part is your way out.”

Since curing my anxiety, I’ve undergone many hardships, and yet for the most part I’ve been calm. I’ve learned to wait patiently and trust that all will work out in the end. I no longer allow my mind to throw me into a frenzy of panic and upset. I simply notice the voice, physically picture myself rising above it, and at times will even tell it to hush up.

This is not something that is a quick fix. I am five years into this process, and at times I allow the voice to become loud and powerful again. My life will begin to flow downwards, I will become upset, and that clues me in that I am allowing my mind to take over.

Any negative feelings we are encountering in our day to day life
are only there to show us what needs to change.

Notice when you feel upset, try to understand why, and then change – either your way of thinking or the situation itself. By changing your inner world, I promise you that your outer world will shift as well.

Rise above “that voice” and tell it to go away. Do the very thing this voice fears the most and in time, that arguing yell that seems to follow you around, will become a soft whisper. This whisper is there to protect you, but realize, that in protecting you, it can keep you stuck. Stuck in old ways, where there’s no room for growth.

Having anxiety is a lot like fearing change.
And I can promise you, that in life, change is the greatest thing that can happen.

*Disclaimer: Please do not stop taking any medications without speaking to your physician or healthcare professional. The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only, and is made available to you as self-help tools for your own use.

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer

“There’s always going to be something that can bother you, if you let it.”

“You must live your life without getting uptight and worrying about it. You actually live life instead of fearing or fighting it.”

“You just don’t fight the mind. In fact, you don’t even try to change it. You just make a game out of relaxing in the face of its melodrama.”

“You cannot spend your life avoiding things that are not actually happening, or everything will become negative. All you will end up seeing is how much can potentially go wrong.”

“Stress only happens when you resist life’s events. If you’re neither pushing life away, nor pulling it toward you, then you are not creating any resistance.”

“You don’t want your happiness to be conditional upon the behavior of other people. It’s bad enough that your happiness is conditional upon your own behavior. When you start making it conditional upon other people’s behavior, you’re in serious trouble.”

plan it

plan it