I am someone with lots of dreams. However, like being tied to a rope, my feet were afraid to even take a step forward, to reach those dreams. What annoys me most is the fact that the rope doesn’t actually exist; it is merely my negative thoughts wrapped around me.
Anxiety has made my steps short, even on several occasions, I just felt that I did not do anything at all, without taking any step further.
Over the years, I’ve studied patterns inside of myself and I realized that whenever I feel anxious, I tend to lock myself tightly in a room. Along with all of the negative possibilities that might happen to me in a situation.
I always imagined the worst would happen and it had an immediate effect on my body; my stomach hurts or my head feels dizzy. In the end, I understood that I needed to break that constant pattern.
As a way of getting myself out of the room; I built and freed myself, I did what I had always loved; writing. When I am about to get into a situation that I know will make me suffer anxiety, at night or a few hours earlier, I will take my book and draw a line dividing the two halves of the paper I use.
On the left side, I wrote down all the worst things that would happen to me, anything that I feared might happen. While on the right side, I tried my best to write down the best possible outcome for the activity.
At first, I had a hard time. However, over time I got used to it to the point that sometimes I just could just map everything out in my head, without needing to wrote it down.
My efforts have certainly helped me. The worst possibilities still appear in my head, but now, the best possibilities also pop up in my head now and then. Possibilities of which being the reason I dare to step up and do a whole lot of new activities.
Try new things. Like the meaning of being free, which is not being attached, I am no longer bound by things that make me anxious. I feel I am free whenever I have overcome my anxiety.
Therefore, for me, freedom from mental illness means accepting that I am in a situation where I need to help myself to be free from what has been holding me back.
