According to the Oxford Dictionary, anxiety is defined as a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome; a desire to do something, typically accompanied by unease. Psychiatry defines it as a nervous disorder by a state of excessive uneasiness and apprehension, typically with compulsive behavior or panic attacks. More than 3 million people suffer from anxiety a year.

Anxiety; thats a big scary word for most people, especially the older generations. We have been taught that having any sort of concern or worry over future events is unacceptable; to the point that if you do, then you are not ok. It’s just nerves, or you are scared. Suck it up and move on and deny, deny, deny that it is even anything close to anxiety. Anxiety has been seen that only people who “see a professional” can suffer from this. This, however, is incorrect.

This is not accurate. This is not reality. The reality of anxiety is its life. Life is all about nervousness and uncertainty. We all have those things that we want to ensure gets done. We all have those times where we don’t know what’s going to happen. We all have things that stay on our mind until we do something about them. This is life.

Maybe its knowing you want to go to bed, and your work clothes need to go in the dryer and in the morning you need to remember to put them in your gym bag so that you actually have a uniform to wear to work.

Maybe its trying to get your child to bed after you told her countless times to turn off YouTube and brush her teeth…

Maybe its just wanting, needing quiet time to yourself for once and no matter how much your try, you don’t get it. And that makes you irritated.

The reality of it all is that anxiety stems from outside influence that we cannot control; but desperately want to. In our minds, we know what we can’t control everything. But when our minds and inner voice are not working together, our mind attempts to keep the inner voice from talking. This is where anxiety comes from and the secret is that this is absolutely normal.

Understanding yourself and what triggers your anxiety is the key to controlling it. We all have things that cause some level of anxiety.

Sometimes we just need to sit our minds and inner voice down, put the get along shirt on both of them and say it’s not coming off until they are getting along.