Going with the flow has never been something I've excelled in.
Relinquishing control and letting things come as they please usually sets my anxiety on fire.
However, in more recent times, I have worked hard to liberate that part of me that tells me the safe side is always the right option.
I have recently begun schema therapy with my psychologist, which is a form of treatment that helps you trace and rewrite ingrained thought patterns that have formed from a young age.
It has been confronting, yet oddly comforting to draw lines of similarity between all of these seemingly unrelated events in my life.
From this therapy, we have been able to highlight that my need for recognition and fear of being ‘left behind’, has created some really unstable thought patterns for the now 23-year-old version of me.
The GREAT news is, for all the great discomfort that comes with casting a mirror on all of your greatest insecurities, you are also given the ability to recognise when these patterns appear, and just as importantly, gives you a chance to rewrite them.
One of my biggest weaknesses for a long time was my need for validation from everybody around me. I always had to know I was needed, valued, loved, appreciated, and WANTED.
Let me tell you how bloody liberating it feels when you stop caring so much about what others think of you and the decisions you make.
Why was I giving the people around me so much power over my wellbeing?
Focusing on yourself and your own goals can be difficult when we have been brought up in a culture that asks you to always consider others' needs over your own.
Centering your world around yourself is the most selfless thing you can do. It gives you the chance to be the best version of yourself, which allows you to show up for others more effectively.
I still feel immeasurable amounts of guilt when I try to make life decisions because my anxious brain plays out every possible outcome for myself and those around me with each option.
I am working hard to surrender to the flow of life more often because at the end of the day I am the person that has to live with my own decisions.
Every day we are faced with choices that will either let us just survive, or THRIVE.
If you aren’t taking risks and choosing the uncomfortable options, you are just surviving.
What is the point of living life the safe way, if it means you will never grow?
It is a pretty exciting feeling knowing there are still better versions of myself to come.
I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty keen to meet those future editions of myself.
