I recently started counseling again. It has been about 7 years since I went to a counselor. A lot has happened in 7 years, and I felt that I needed to go again to work through grief, disappointment, and lies that I still see that I am believing about myself that creates anxiety, fear, and stress in my life.
As I poured out a lot of the issues that I feel is affecting me currently during my first session, I was struck by how far I still need to go in my healing journey. I have come a long way since I first started getting counseling in my twenties, but the journey is far from finished. This can be both discouraging and exciting at the same time. Discouraging because there is so much more to sort through and deal with, but exciting because that means I can continue to grow and heal.
My anxiety has been through the roof the last few years. I did not realize that I even had anxiety until I started working in corporate America and hearing others struggle with the same thing. I have always had anxiety even as a kid, but it was normal for me so I did not realize what it was. Getting a job where deadlines and metrics are continuosly in front of you really made it apparent and helped me to define it. Even now in my current job, the anxiety grows and grows the busier it gets. With an increase in volume comes an increase in anxiety.
My first goal in my current counseling journey is to learn to manage my anxiety so that I am not constantly feeling it. I want to set boundaries in all parts of my life that help me to stay more relaxed and less stressed. I struggle with this in some part because I feel like I do not matter. My wants, my desires, my feelings, my struggles, my dreams, (I could go on and on), don’t matter as much as everyone else’s. I recognize this is a lie that I believe because I know in my head that I do matter just as much as anyone else, but I do not live that way.
I think a lot of women struggle with this. In talking with some close friends a couple of weeks ago, it struck me that anxiety, stress, and burnout are common themes with all of us. It think that we bring a lot of it on ourselves because we do not know how to put boundaries. Boundaries would help us to not burn out or run ourselves ragged trying to juggle everything going on in our lives.
So I am reminding myself more regulary right now that I do matter. I am excited to see how learning to truly believe this will affect my quality of life (and that of my family’s since they won’t have to deal with a stressed out Mama all the time).
