Recovery from anxiety can be frustrating and filled with uncertainty. Some people recover really fast but some need more time. Sometimes you may feel that there isn’t progress made or setbacks might discourage you. No recovery is necessarily linear. You should look at it as climbing a high mountain.
For example, when you climb mountain Everest you don’t climb straight to the top. Usually you climb up and then come back down to acclimate. So it’s up and down, up and down until you hit the summit. Anxiety is kinda the same. You learn new skills, your symptoms get better and sometimes you get small bumps. After each small bump you get better and better.
Here are signs you are recovering from anxiety:
1. Your anxiety symptoms disappear or happen less frequently.
When you start to recover you will slowly notice that your anxiety symptoms get better. Maybe your heart palpitations become less frequent. You experience less intense panic attacks and they reduce from once in the day to once in the week. Things that made you anxious before have no effect on you anymore.
2. You feel in control of your anxiety symptoms.
As you recover, anxiety symptoms may still appear but you know that you will be able to manage them. Maybe you have developed strategies, tools that help you to get through anxious periods. You always have a positive attitude towards your recovery, you believe that whatever comes you will get through it. Bad days might happen but the whole picture is more important. Sometimes you need to take a break in order to reset your body then that’s the path you should take.
3. You don’t think or worry about anxiety anymore.
When your anxiety is at its peak you may find it hard to stop thinking about it. You may worry about experiencing unpleasant symptoms before upcoming daily activities, social events. You may feel uncertain, scared or even frustrated that anxiety will interfere with your daily functioning. When people start to recover, thinking about anxiety becomes less of a priority and people are able to be more present, pieceful within themselves.
4. Your exercising more healthy habits.
Your going to gym, eating healthy, etc. When you feel unwell it becomes harder to take better care of yourself. Sometimes you don’t even feel like doing anything. You might struggle to pull yourself together to do simple things like going for a walk, brushing your teeth regularly. When anxiety leaves your body you gain fresh air of energy that naturally pushes you to take better care of your body.
5. You are less attached to negative content on the internet, people who suffer anxiety.
Sometimes we look out for people with similar struggles to gain comfort that we are not the only ones who go through hard times. It gives that feeling that we are not alone and if others have to deal with it we can too. When you recover from anxiety your attachment to struggles, illness recalibrates and your attention shifts to other, more positive areas of life. You don’t feel the need to identify with a certain group of people because your suffering isn’t unbearable as it used to be.
6. You’re spending less time on google, reddit, internet forums researching your symptoms.
We often google because we feel uncertain, scared about our anxiety problem. Through googling we often try to calm our fear and gain some clarity if we can recover, overcome our anxiety problem. When we start to recover we regain that safety back within ourselves and reassurance that we gained from google, forums becomes less meaningful. This can be the reason why there are less success stories because when people get better they stop identifying with a problem and they focus on other things in their lives.
7. You are not going to the doctor, spending time in the hospital, ER.
Anxiety symptoms can be scary and make you feel like your health is in danger. It’s only natural to reach out for medical help and make sure you are healthy. Tricky part about anxiety is that its symptoms can create an experience that is close to disease we can die from – heart failure, seizure, stroke. When you recover from anxiety you perceive your symptoms as part of anxiety not physical disease and you gain comfort. You have greater ability to discern between stress response and actual disease which lowers your anxiety, intensity of anxiety symptoms.
8. You feel comfortable going to the doctor.
Anxiety in itself can create unpleasant symptoms that often get worse when you visit a doctor. People with anxiety often worry that medical examinations might find something abnormal, so they avoid testing. You may also avoid certain manipulations because they trigger anxiety symptoms. For example, you may worry about fainting while the doctor is taking your blood samples. This feeling of fainting is actually caused by anxiety, if it repeats again and again without medical reason.
When you recover from anxiety your physical symptoms fade and your concern about finding something abnormal starts to disappear. Medical manipulations also don’t trigger intense anxiety and you feel more comfortable participating in them.
9. Getting back to your passions, hobbies.
Anxiety can take a toll on your body, make you feel ill, tired, less motivated and generally less excited about life. When people start to recover from anxiety they gain back positive energy, motivation and excitement about life. That means that lower hierarchy needs of feeling well, safe, healthy are met and actualization of higher hierarchy needs can begin (read more about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs). You may start to slowly get back to your normal life spending time with friends, going out for movies, traveling, playing music instruments, etc.
10. You feel better and other people can notice change.
Anxiety can beat you down and make you a lesser person for who you are. Maybe you look sad and don’t joke, smile as much as you used to. Your performance in job, school have decreased. You can’t take as much responsibility and you have to ask for help. Maybe you avoid leaving a house and participating in social activities you did before. When you recover people may say to you:,, You look energetic and smile more.” or ,,I saw you at the gym yesterday and I thought you quit it a long time ago.”