Therapy can be grueling sometimes. Anybody who tells you differently is either lying or trying to soften the blow. Regardless, they've done you a disservice, in my opinion. In order to reap the benefits of therapy, a commitment to work hard in partnership with your therapist is required. I've engaged in trauma therapy to help with my anxiety. My experience with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) trauma therapy is hard work that's paying off.

I've suffered from anxiety since I was a child, although I didn't get diagnosed with an anxiety disorder until my late-30s. The often visceral symptoms of anxiety are hard enough for an adult to describe, let alone a child. The episodes I had as a child were scary, and while I tried to explain what was happening to my parents, they simply didn't know enough back then to help me. And so, I began to suffer my anxiety in silence.

They say there's an app for everything. I certainly have dozens of apps on my mobile devices that provide access to whatever I need at my fingertips. I recently started using an app to track my moods as a means by which to map the ups and downs of my anxiety.

I've been on antianxiety medication since 2001 when I was first diagnosed with anxiety and depression. Out of some odd compulsion or perhaps, shame from having to take drugs to manage my mental illness, I weaned off my anxiety medications three times since I began. The first two times, it ended badly. The last time, it ended in disaster.

My anxiety is, thankfully, well managed right now. But six months ago, my anxiety was so bad that I couldn't escape the intrusive thoughts that taunted me to end it all. I had intrusive thoughts of suicide.

A few years ago, I wrote a post talking about how my love of stuffed animals helps me with my anxiety. To this day, I get more positive comments about that post than anything else I’ve written, and I’m glad that it has resonated with those who have read it. In this post, I want to continue talking about stuffed animals because they still play a big part in how I manage my anxiety.

Depending on where you live, the clocks were set forward this past weekend. While the clocks "springing forward" may be a time-honored tradition, the event plays tricks with my anxiety, sometimes setting me back for days.

I've had acute panic and anxiety since I was a child; this was undiagnosed anxiety, of course. I remember waking up out of a sound sleep in the middle of a panic attack, although I didn't know that's what it was at the time. My parents said I was having bad dreams, which I'm sure made sense to them. Even as a child, I knew that I wasn't having bad dreams, although the symptoms felt like I was locked in some kind of nightmare.

I have a lot of blankets on my bed, on my couch, and elsewhere. When I’m relaxing, even during the hotter months of the year, I’m often underneath some of those blankets.

There are some days when I am feeling particularly anxious that it feels hard to do much of anything, and feeling accomplished is practically impossible. Creativity is usually the first to go – anxiety tends to lead to intense bouts of writer’s block. But even outside of creativity, which is hard even when one feels okay, it can be hard to feel like doing much of anything.