How Spirituality Intensified My Anxiety

And why I’m grateful for it

I began my spiritual journey almost a decade ago and I can wholeheartedly say it was the best decision I have ever made.

Spirituality completely changed me as a person by not only revealing different sides of myself that I didn’t even know existed but also by changing the way I view life.

When I first started my journey I was excited. I knew quite a few spiritualists and they all seemed to always be at ease with everything going on around them.

Even if they were on a bad luck streak, they seemed to always hold a genuine smile on their face and stay calm through it all.

This is what I wanted for myself.

I have had terrible anxiety all my life and it is extremely exhausting. I get severe panic attacks where I sometimes scream at the top of my lungs and hyperventilate till I feel like I’m on the brink of death.

I completely disassociate from reality and find it hard to come back. It’s terrifying. But what made it even scarier was the fact that I didn’t know why it was happening.

All my life I wondered what triggered my anxiety. What caused me to randomly shift into fight or flight mode multiple times a week? What caused me to have these malicious intrusive thoughts that I just cannot seem to get rid of?

Truthfully speaking, even though I was curious about the reason, I didn’t want to actually figure it out.

I knew that it would have to have been something extremely traumatic for my brain to turn against me like this and I felt like I won’t be able to handle that wound opening back up.

Before I started my spiritual journey, I didn’t really understand what it meant to be spiritual. From my point of view, it just seemed like all of the spiritual people I knew taught themselves to be happy no matter what. They seemed to always enjoy life.

Even if they were told the world was going to end tomorrow, they would still somehow find a way to see the bright side.

I knew this type of mindset is what I needed in order to rid myself of my anxiety. What I didn’t know was how agonizing the journey was going to be.

What Does It Mean To Heal?

Once I made the choice to embark on my spiritual journey, I began to meditate religiously. At the time I didn’t know much about the wonders of meditation but what I did know was that it was an amazing way to keep yourself grounded.

So, I meditated every single day. I started with only five minutes but I quickly realized that’s not nearly enough time. Five minutes felt more like one minute to me.

This is the beauty of meditation. You’ll willingly want to sit and meditate for longer because you want to get whisked away into your own little world.

So there I am one day trying out a new type of meditation designed for release. In my little naive mind, I thought that meant I would get to release the tension and stress I’ve accumulated throughout the day.

Never in a billion years did I expect events from when I was a child to make an appearance in my mind!

I was startled, to say the least. I saw all of my heartbreaks, the horrible fights my parents had while I was growing up, and my childhood bullies.

I’m also an empath so all of the memories that came flooding back made me empathize with my inner child and I felt as if I was back in time reliving every moment.

Understandably, this triggered my anxiety, and the next thing I know I’m clutching my chest and pulling at my hair once again feeling like I was experiencing my final moments on this planet.

Once I came back to reality, I cried. I cried hard.

Crying is a beautiful form of release that most people aren’t aware of, including me at the time.

I thought back to every scenario that I saw while meditating. I felt the emotions deeply as if I was still going through these experiences.

While I seemed to have moved on in the real world, my subconscious mind seemed to have been scarred by these painful events and chose to hold on to them.

Now, most people would probably say “Nuh-uh. Nope. I’m done with this. No more meditating for me.” Me on the other hand, I had this desire brewing within me. I for some reason felt even more determined to keep up with my daily meditations and to confront my childhood demons.

I learned that in order to heal a wound, you must first acknowledge it. You can’t avoid your feelings and expect your issues to suddenly disappear.

A lot of people think time heals but the truth is, you’re the only one that can heal your wounds.

Time shouldn’t even be a factor in the healing process because each wound will take a different amount of time to heal. Don’t worry about how long it takes, think about how you’ll feel when you’ve come to terms with your emotions.

It didn’t take a couple of days or a couple of months to heal my inner child. It took three years.

I kept fighting for three years straight despite continuously triggering my anxiety and entering a cycle of falling in and out of depression.

To say the journey was hard would be an understatement, but it was worth it.

A Pheinox Rising From The Ashes

After those three years, I felt as if I was reborn and given a second chance at life. The old me had died along with all of the scars she had.

I was reborn into someone who can finally enjoy being alive.

There’s nothing weighing me down anymore. Nothing holding me back from achieving the things I want. There’s no guilt, shame, or pain lodged within my subconscious mind anymore.

The shackles on my heart had finally been released and it is a feeling I thank the universe for every single day.

The feeling of freedom that you get from healing is not like the freedom you feel when you become an adult and are able to be independent.

The feeling of freedom you get from healing runs through your veins and propels you into a new reality where you have the ability to create and destroy anything you please.

This freedom isn’t short-lived either. You’ll feel it for the rest of your life because it will serve as a reminder that you could not have become the person you are today had you not broken free from your past.

There’s A Lesson In Everything

Becoming spiritual did make my anxiety go haywire for a moment, but it also taught me how to control it.

Spirituality taught me that I am much more than my body. I am a soul residing in a body lent to me by God. Spirituality showed me how to differentiate between the 3D and the 5D.

Whenever I encountered something stressful at work or whenever I felt my anxiety starting to make a move, I would remind myself there are souls looking out for me.

I am always being guided so even if something seems to go wrong, it’s actually just leading me down a better path.

Spirituality taught me how to be secure in my own personal power and build the life I want to live from scratch.

Becoming spiritual taught me how to stay grounded which can help anxiety tremendously. Knowing that I am here on earth for a reason always relit the fire within me to keep pushing despite the blockages in my path.

I am here for a reason, and I must complete my mission. I was given this task because I am competent enough to handle it.

Anxiety is a 3D emotion. It belongs to this dimension, not the divine realm.

When you’re experiencing an overwhelming emotion think about if it’s just one that humans can feel, or if it’s an emotion you’re still able to feel when you die and your soul ascends.

I fight off feelings like anxiety by remembering that I won’t experience it forever. When my body is dead and gone, my soul won’t have these panic attacks anymore. I won’t feel stressed and overwhelmed by the smallest inconvenience.

Although I hate my anxiety, I am sometimes grateful for it.

I sometimes think I was meant to have anxiety because without it I wouldn’t have even been interested in spirituality. I would’ve probably never acknowledged my own greatness.

I used to consider my anxiety a curse but now, I feel blessed to have this curse.