TLDR at the bottom

Y'all, I'm just so happy. There's actually hope in all of this. I understood there was, logically, but now I can \*see\* it right in front of me.

&gt;Backstory: I've had some degree of anxiety issues probably most of my life. It was manageable for a long time but went off the rails with multiple long term traumatic events (possible PTSD or CPTSD) and the loss of structure that college gave me. I started struggling to do some of the things that matter most to me in life, like making art and seeing friends. There were times I didn't go outside for a month at a time because I was so afraid. My struggles got progressively worse from 2012 up until sometime in late 2017 when I had a breakdown. I rebounded from the breakdown but still struggled a lot for a while after that point.

The point is, this has been a long term and severe struggle for me. I was beginning to lose hope of recovery. I thought I might just be broken.

My progress since 2019 has been complex and I don't need to get into all the details along the way, but the more tools I learned, the more my progress built upon itself and got faster. Then a little while ago something clicked.

I had thought that if I "solved" what was wrong, everything would be better. I'd just go back to the way I used to be. I would spend days sometimes researching mental health and self help online. Sometimes I would try to figure out the exact moment everything went wrong, but even with the traumatic events as a point of reference, most of my big changes in my life didn't seem to come on suddenly or correlate to any particular event.

The fact was, I was avoiding things because of my anxiety. And the more I avoided them, the worse the anxiety got. Maybe something started the avoidance behaviour, but it didn't get bad until I kept doing it over and over so of course it didn't relate to any specific thing. And worst of all, no matter how well-intentioned it might have been, I had to confront that my research and pouring through my memories had both become methods of avoiding just feeling the feelings I was having.

So I confronted the simple fact that my anxiety wouldn't get better until I did the things that scared me as often as possible.

This was a while back now, and baby steps turned into a complete change of lifestyle for me. There were panic attacks along the way, but I took care of myself and got back to it little by little. Now I'm hanging out with people I never thought I'd have the confidence to interact with and working on my art pretty much every day.

When I notice something makes me uncomfortable, I ask myself if it's something I really want or not, and if it is I try to push myself to do it. Small things even, like making a choice between two things I want to buy but I'm afraid of making the wrong choice. There's no sense agonizing over it forever, there's a certain point where it's not about research anymore. It just becomes about trying your best and living with your choices.

I still get anxious about things, but I'm getting more comfortable with being anxious. Even the things I can't control (so there's nothing really to take action with), I'm getting better at being okay with it as a result of not hiding from those feelings all the time. I still have bad days, like if my sleep gets interrupted for example it's easy to fall into bad habits because I'm just not on my game mentally, but they're not as bad as they used to be and I rebound quickly.

**TLDR; I've had some degree of anxiety most of my life. I've struggled with pretty severe anxiety and possibly other issues for around 9 years, but I'm finally doing the things that matter most to me again even if it's a bit scary sometimes.**

I feel like myself again, and I absolutely believe that if I can do it anyone can.