Emotions can be complicated especially for someone struggling with mental health. The latin derivative for the word emotion, “emotere” means energy in motion. At its core that is what anxiety is, energy in motion. When we deny our feelings and allow them to pile up without properly accepting them they get stuck. The motion of the energy stops and begins to build one negative thought on top of the other. The longer we let this go one the worse it can get seeping out in bursts of anger or in many cases, anxiety. It’s natural to want to push aside the negative thoughts and feelings associated with panic attacks, to want to distract yourself and think of anything besides the impending doom you’re feeling. The thing is, the harder you fight it the worse it will get and the longer it will last. Think of it like fighting fire with gasoline, you pour the gas on the flames and hope it will extinguish. The only way out though I have learned is through. Through feeling those uncomfortable and scary feelings that make you tremble with fear. Letting them in, letting them overwhelm you, feeling them to the fullest capability. I know how insane that must sound. How insane it must feel to try to do. It goes against every basic instinct in our minds and bodies. But it isn’t until we accept and withstand every ounce of anxiety our minds can throw at us that we truly deal with the emotions we are suppressing. In the moment while having an anxiety attack it can feel like it will last forever. It can make you think that nothing will ever be alright again no matter how hard you try to convince yourself otherwise. It makes you feel trapped and alone and terrified and tells you that no one and nothing will be able to help you. But those thoughts did subside eventually. Even if they came back a day, an hour, even ten minutes later, they did go away. That’s the thing with anxiety, it is simply a feeling, and all feelings pass. The good and the bad, the joy and the sorrow, all of it will fluctuate but none will last forever. Maybe your reprieve is only for a day or an hour but I can promise you that it will come. embrace your emotions and the cycles within yourself that change like the seasons, stop fighting against them and instead learn to live with them, like a dance.