I recently had the honor of being a guest on the podcast, Love & Life with Dr. Karin Anderson Abrell. I randomly came across Dr. Karin’s Instagram account earlier this year and resonated with so many of her posts and podcast episodes about the difficulties in relationships. I would frequently comment on her posts that I wish I had found her a year prior.
We connected on Instagram and continued chatting here and there throughout the year until recently when she said, “Let me know if there’s ever a topic you’d like to cover on the program! I’d love to have you be a guest.”
I was excited and nervous. I knew what I wanted to talk about and also knew it would be my first time being truly honest about this topic. I wanted to discuss my experience with anxiety and how it led me to hiking and camping. I’ve written about this many times in Instagram posts and on this blog – how facing my anxiety about hiking helped me to alleviate my general anxiety. But I never really shared why I was so anxious to start.
It all stemmed from a break-up.
Even writing that still makes me cringe. Honestly, I still carry some shame about it, yet this process of sharing it will help to release it’s grip on me. The more we hold in and keep silent about the things we feel shameful of, the heavier that shame will feel. To share it, is to release it and find that it’s really not so shameful nor irrelevant after all.
So yeah, I experienced a whooooole lot of anxiety after a break-up. I went from feeling really safe and stable in life with this relationship as a solid foundation, to feeling like I was left to just float out in space untethered. I felt like I lost my footing on life. I decided to take this feeling and turn toward it.
Finding my footing on a hiking trail also meant finding it in life.
In the end, that break-up was one of the best experiences of my life – not because it was fun or exciting, but because it shook me to my core. It made me take a hard look at my life and reaffirmed that I wasn’t living the life I wanted to have, even within that relationship. I learned so much about myself by letting myself experience the discomfort of my anxiety and sadness. This is why I always hold so much hope for my clients experiencing something similar. I know how awful it feels and also how beautiful the end result can be! It’s all in the meaning we choose to create from our experiences of discomfort and difficulty.
“Loss is simply what happens to you in life. Meaning is what you make happen.”
David Kessler
I am really grateful for the encouragement from Dr. Karin to do the podcast and to have the opportunity to share my experience with the world. I know this is just the start of sharing my story and I am really excited to continue on this journey of authenticity and vulnerability.
If you’re interested in learning more about how I faced my anxiety by hiking, check out my previous blog post: https://therapygirlaz.com/hiking-through-anxiety/
For my episode with Dr. Karin: https://link.chtbl.com/love-and-life
1 throught on "Love and Life"