Anxiety

I have thought a lot today about anxiety. The guy I am working with (he displays autistic tendencies and has a learning disability) is the most sensitive person I ever met to anxiety - not just his own but anybody and everybody around him. It is really strange - like he can sense it and then somehow turns it in on himself. It is also very sad.

I think anxiety is a terrible thing - I know I suffer with anxiety - that I can worry over everything and nothing - that I worry about what might be when really what will be, will be. Perhaps I have been given the chance to work with this man to help me understand how futile anxiety can be. Sometimes I look at him at see a great big ball of 'flight', his body desperate to get away from the feelings but unable. He doesn't fight, well not as you or I see it but instead he turns it on himself and hurts himself. Its a terrible thing to see and a terrible thing to try and help. When I am with him I want the world to be, well perfect. I want it to be quiet and beautiful and loving and kind. I know this cannot be but wish it could be. He could so do with some 'peace and love man'.

Of course the real way to help him is to give him the tools to help him deal with life, the ups and the downs, the good and the bad. And that is what we must try to do - trouble is it is not so easy with someone so anxious without some of the coping tools many of us take for granted.

I hope that in the next few months we all find a way to help him have a different life - he deserves it. We all deserve it.

Maybe even I deserve things to be better. I know I probably wont get that 'break', that bit of good luck that would make my life better but hope that I will find another way. Maybe that is what working with this man is trying to show me.

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