After many years of struggling with an anxiety disorder, I reached a point where no solution seemed to exist. I had tried different methods, but none of them brought lasting results. It felt as though I was stuck in endless attempts and searches to “fix” this problem within myself. I was willing to try anything to be free from anxiety, because the discomfort, resistance, and constant battle had left me mentally and physically exhausted.

On one hand, I had a strong urge to solve it. On the other, I genuinely believed my anxiety wasn’t justified, since I had no direct reason to experience it—nothing extreme had happened. I carried a lot of shame around it. At times, I was confused and even felt strange, wondering:

Am I just making all of this up?

It all began when I noticed the first signs, though I didn’t fully understand what they were. “This is temporary, it will pass,” I told myself. I pretended everything was fine. I pushed it down.

I lived on autopilot, but my state didn’t improve—it only escalated. I tried to numb myself with activity until it felt as though anxiety had been installed in me without an “off switch.” I could no longer get off the wheel.

I didn’t listen to my body or my mind. Instead, I kept going in the same way—numbing myself with overworking, doing more, and trying so hard to achieve something.

All of this happened alongside daily anxiety, as if I were constantly grinding my way through it. Even though I felt unwell, I kept pushing forward. It was self-sabotage.

I couldn’t stay still or calm down. I felt the need to do several things at once, as if I were always chasing something or had to prove something. I constantly needed to achieve, to be productive, in order to feel “enough.” If I wasn’t doing something, guilt would set in.

The inner restlessness drove me to keep acting, just to avoid the uncomfortable symptoms that came with anxiety. Constant busyness became a way to avoid being in touch with my feelings. My nervous system could no longer calm down.

Eventually, I realized I had been searching for solutions for so long, but nothing gave lasting results—until I understood that anxiety is not a cause in itself, but an outlet.
It is a consequence of something else. That’s why nothing had worked: I was treating the symptom without addressing the root causes.

Excessive anxiety is not a natural state. Experiencing it constantly signals an imbalance in the nervous system—it is an output of that imbalance. When anxiety becomes persistent, it’s a sign the nervous system cannot calm down. It is like an alarm signal from the body.

Earlier, I said I truly believed nothing extreme had ever happened to me. But during one therapy session, memories I had subconsciously blocked came back. I remembered the deep loneliness I had experienced throughout my childhood. As I was physically punished, I never felt safe—either emotionally or physically.

That was the beginning of a chain of realizations: I understood that there wasn’t one single cause, but rather an interplay of different circumstances and factors that reinforced one another.

Mental health issues are multifaceted. They don’t always stem from one single event, but are closely tied to how a person has learned to survive and how we interpret our experiences. Trauma doesn’t have to be extreme—it can be the accumulation of repeated experiences. Often, when there is no one clear cause, it may feel as though the problem is imagined, when in reality it is so complex that the reasons are simply difficult to identify.

Our brain and nervous system function with the aim of protecting us from danger, based on how we have perceived, interpreted, and stored past experiences in the body. When we encounter trauma, stress, or emotional neglect in early life, our subconscious forms beliefs and survival strategies that help us cope in the moment—but in the long run, these can become unhealthy patterns.

Over time, these coping mechanisms become familiar and “safe” to the nervous system, even if they are actually harmful to us. It is precisely this familiarity that keeps us trapped in the same cycle, because the brain prefers familiar chaos over peace, which feels unknown and therefore threatening.

Now I realize that most of my anxiety was shaped by how I was raised, how my parents showed up, and how I adapted with different coping mechanisms. Eventually, this led to severe anxiety, panic attacks, and burnout. 

This is not about blame—it’s simply that I was a child of two parents who carried on social conditioning and hadn’t healed themselves.