The first therapist gave me tools. Breathing techniques. Journaling prompts. Ways to interrupt the spiral when it started. These helped, somewhat. I used them religiously. When I felt the anxiety building, I'd do the breathing. When the spiral started, I'd use the journaling prompts. It was like having a first aid kit for my brain.
The second therapist gave me medication. An SSRI that took six weeks to kick in and had side effects I won't detail except to say they were not fun—the first two weeks were worse than before, everyone warned me about that, but nobody told me how bad "worse" would actually be. But when it kicked in, something lifted. The constant low-grade panic that had been my background radiation for twenty years went quiet. Not gone. Quiet. Like a radio that was always playing in the next room suddenly going silent.
The third therapist—and yes, it took three tries to find someone I actually worked with, which is exhausting and expensive and should probably tell us something about how we approach mental health—asked me a question no one had asked before.
She said: "What is your anxiety telling you?"
I said I didn't understand the question. Anxiety is a malfunction, right? A brain glitch. Something that happens when the amygdala misfires and treats everything like a threat. It's not telling me anything. It's just wrong.
She said that was one way to look at it. But another way was that anxiety is information. It tells you something about what matters to you. It flags things you've decided are important enough to worry about. The anxiety isn't the problem—it's the alarm. The question is what's triggering it.
I went home and thought about this for a week.
The anxiety I'd been experiencing for twenty years—it peaked during specific periods. My twenties, when I was trying to figure out career and relationships. My mid-thirties, when I was deciding whether to have kids. My early forties, when I realized I'd made some decisions I couldn't undo and had to figure out how to live with them.
What I figured out: My anxiety was not random. It was tracking things I'd decided mattered. My job security. My marriage. My kids' futures. My health. The things I couldn't fully control.
When I framed it this way, the anxiety seemed less like a malfunction and more like an uncomfortable notification system. My body was saying: hey, this thing you care about? It's uncertain. Deal with it.
Some of those things I could deal with. I changed jobs. I went to couples therapy. I made actual decisions instead of letting life happen to me. I stopped waiting for certainty that wasn't coming.
Some of those things I couldn't deal with. My kids will face challenges I can't protect them from. My health will change in ways I can't control. The future is uncertain, full stop. That's not pessimism. That's just how it works.
But understanding that my anxiety was tracking things I cared about—even though that sounds like a consolation prize—actually changed my relationship with it.
Instead of fighting it, I started asking it questions. What's the worry here? What am I afraid of? What's the actual threat?
Sometimes the answers were useful. Sometimes I could do something concrete. Sometimes the anxiety was just noise, and I could let it be noise without spiraling into full panic.
Three years later, I'm still on medication. Still in therapy. Still anxious, some days more than others. Some weeks are harder than others. Some months feel like progress and some feel like setback.
But I stopped thinking of it as my enemy. It's more like an overprotective friend who won't shut up about stuff I can't control.
I'm learning to listen differently.
The alarm is still going off. But I'm starting to hear what it's actually saying.
The mental health industry wants you to think anxiety is a disease. A malfunction. Something to be fixed with medication and therapy and coping skills. And maybe sometimes it is. But sometimes it's just your body trying to protect you from something real.
The trick is figuring out which is which.
I've gotten better at that. Not perfect. But better.
When the anxiety spikes, I ask questions now. What's happening? What am I worried about? Is this something I can control?
If it's something I can control, I control it. I make a plan. I take action. I do something concrete.
If it's something I can't control, I let it go. Or I try to. Sometimes it takes longer than others.
The medication helps with this. It doesn't fix the anxiety—it just lowers the baseline enough that I can think clearly. Without it, the alarm is too loud. I can't hear anything except the noise. With it, I can listen.
I'm not saying everyone should be on medication. I'm saying everyone should figure out what works for them. What helps them hear.
The goal isn't to eliminate anxiety. The goal is to understand it.
And maybe, eventually, to thank it.
It kept me alive through some hard times. It reminded me that things mattered. It told me what I cared about.
Now I listen. And sometimes, when I can, I act.
That's growth, I think. Or at least it's something.
