My Anxious Life

For people with anxiety disorder, like myself, life can be very complicated sometimes.  Here's part of the reason why.  You know how everyone always tells you how self-confidence is so crucial for everything you do?  Like looking for a job, or going on dates, or making major life decisions?  Imagine if there was always a voice in the back of your mind nagging at you that all the decisions you've made in your life, even the major ones that affected the formation of your identity, were wrong, for one reason or another.  Now try to be confident, even though from day to day various important aspects of your life just seem so wrong.  It's really difficult to remain confident in such circumstances.  I've been to therapists, doctors, leaders and followers of various world religions, and hedonists.  No one can have "the" answer (though I have learned many things that are very helpful to me in controlling the disorder), because no matter what decisions you make, sooner or later, you'll have to fight yourself to maintain them.  And constant battling with yourself erodes your confidence.  

I consider it a mark of success that despite all this, I have a long term job.  I own a house.  I have a family, a very intelligent daughter, friends, and a caring religious community.  But in no way am I confused about this: if I didn't have this disorder, I could have gotten a lot further in this life, financially at the very least.  But I'm not going to spend too much time fretting over what could have been: I am who I am.  Maybe, just maybe, I've learned some things I might not have otherwise learned, or done some good things I might not have known to do, if I hadn't had anxiety disorder.  And regardless of what I have to go through, day to day or week to week, I am blessed.