The scene unfolding today was so profound that I couldn’t stop myself from crying. I was watching a client discover herself, as if seeing her reflection for the first time. She was amazed at the image.
“Maybe I am normal,” she kept saying. “All of this time I was thinking that there was something wrong with me. Maybe I am normal.”
When we began working together her anxiety was almost debilitating. She lived with constant worry about the next surge of anxiety. Her world got smaller as she hid parts of herself from others. We felt defeated at times because some problems seemed bigger than either of us. But she kept showing up to therapy, to the place where it was difficult to name feelings as she tried to fight back tears.
At some point, something shifted. She noticed that she was “moving toward life”. She used her healthy coping strategies in situations that previously would have sent her into a negative cycle. Her mind opened to possibilities of what her next steps could be. She said yes to new opportunities.
Today the anxiety that she felt wasn’t the immobilizing kind that she knew so well. It was “normal” anxiety—the kind that people have when they are preparing to do something unknown but exciting.
She finally had normal anxiety.
We both cried. How could we not?