{ Long ago, when I first began Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), my therapist referred to anxiety as something/someone different than I had ever heard it been referred to before. He called it the "anxiety monster." }

 Growing up with OCD/Generalized Anxiety Disorder had become something that handicapped me. It was a part of my personality. It was something that was "wrong" with me. It was something I would never be able to get over. Anxiety and I were intermingled. We were one and there was no distinguishing me from it. Beth = anxiety and anxiety = Beth. 

 What I didn't realize at the time, which my therapist had, is that anxiety does not define a person. It is not who they are at their core. What it is, is a monster. A monster who had latched onto every aspect of my life, every fiber of my being. So much so that it seemed there was no way to escape. 

 When he began referring to it as an "anxiety monster," he made it something different -something I could defeat. He began to explain the way the monster survives and grows, constantly separating my sense of self from it. It fed every time I gave into a worry or a fear. Every time I acted on my anxiety with reassurance seeking, compulsions or obsessive behavior, it grew. It would trap me into a corner of a small room, covering the way out with it's giant, green, hairy body (or at least that's how I imagine it).

 The more and more he spoke about this terrifying monster, the more I began to believe it was true. It is true. Anxiety is not something that defines who I am or who you are, but instead it is something for us to defeat. Now don't get me wrong, the monster will always live along side me. It will always lurk in my brain awaiting any opportunity it might have to grow again. The difference is that I have made him so small, so non threatening or scary, that I am able to live my life with a separation of what is and what was. If your giant, green anxiety monster is staring you in the face, do like I did. Throw a pink tutu on him and laugh at how silly he is and how ridiculous his ideas of irrational thinking are. 

 As for my monster and me, we share the best and worse times, we argue with each other constantly, he sometimes has my back and I his. It is a strange relationship, but I guess you could say, we are forever frenemies. <3