Anxiety is real. That should be an obvious fact. Many assume being anxious is merely a silly feeling wherein we make up irrational thoughts in our heads.
My anxiety can be nuts at times. Motherhood did a number on me. While I had suffered from anxiety in the past, having the two boys so close together wrecked my mental health & made it more pronounced.
I was the quintessential “helicopter” parent. For anyone without kids & unfamiliar with the term, it’s basically a parent that just hovers. Straight up. Like a helicopter.
Photo by Jean van der Meulen on Pexels.com
I used to watch their every move. Any little cry or scream I would be there in a heart beat. It got to the point where it was obvious that other moms were judging me & I really needed to lighten up.
But the truth is, I really thought they could DIE at any given moment. How could I not be vigilant? It was my children’s lives!
Sounds dramatic & looking back I know my thoughts were unreasonable. I was worrying about something so much that it was causing physical stress to my body. I was also not letting my kids & even myself a chance to live our best lives. How could we fully appreciate or enjoy a situation if I was scared something bad was going to happen all the time?
I had to slowly immerse myself in situations even though I knew they would make me uncomfortable. I started by venturing out by myself with the kids little by little. Slowly, my threshold of tolerance got bigger. I was able to withstand events that typically would put me in a tailspin of fear & I’d be packing my things ASAP so we could be home and safe.
But what is safe? Things could happen to us at any moment. No amount of caution can prevent us from things if they were meant to happen anyway.
It’s easy to say live your life without fear. Stop worrying about things. Or my favorite, don’t sweat the small stuff. But anxiety is real.
So please, stop telling us to relax. Or that we just need to get over it.
What we need is a little faith. Faith to believe that things will be okay. Faith to say that it’s ok to worry. Because things might not workout the way we want them, but we still need faith to believe that it happened for a reason.
farmerish 