When you get diagnosed with an anxiety disorder all you really hear is the word disorder. Something’s wrong. Not normal. Not what it’s supposed to be. This isn’t a good thing. This is something bad and the thing that’s bad is how I think and how my brain works. The thing that’s bad and wrong is me.

After struggling for six months with anxiety, my disorder drove me to go see a therapist and she is the one who diagnosed me. By that time I had already diagnosed myself (obviously because you know… anxiety and Google are not a good match) and became even more terrified when I heard her, a professional, say it to me.

Over the next few months while going to see her once a week I made tremendous progress. Learning to see all of my thoughts correctly and for what they are and how to basically think in the right way so that I can lessen my anxiety. Although my therapy was “working” I hit a bump in the road when I realized I was dealing with my disorder and I was doing better than before, but I did not love myself the same as I used to. I now saw myself as damaged and like I needed to keep maintenance on myself and would dream about the days when I was “normal” and didn’t have to deal with this and how much better life was before I was dealing with anxiety.

At this bump in the road I took a step back, looked at my life and reevaluated. My therapist and I had a new goal. Learn to love my new self and find all of the new better things about the new me and fully embrace them.

So here are some of the positive things you gain from an anxiety disorder that no one bothers to talk about.

You’ll love/care/appreciate people harder

You don’t take anyone for granted. You’ll find people who stick by you through the irrational thoughts and the panic attacks and you’ll find people who bring you water and hold you while you cry over something that only exists in your head. They have seen you at your worst and loved you for it even still. And you don’t want anyone you love to hurt the way you have so you love those people with all you have and treat them exactly how you know wonderful people like that deserve to be treated and you give them every part of your friendship/love and don’t doubt for a minute that they don’t know it.

You are a better friend for it.

You’ll feel the highs (even little ones) in life more intensely.

You have seen the dark side. You have seen where that dark hole of never ending thoughts leads you. You’ve spent a lot of time feeling the downs in life (in your head). So when you’re not in that hole or nowhere near that hole and you see something nice or something nice happens or someone does something nice for you the world is like a pot of gold with sunshine around every corner you feel so happy to be alive to live these moments. You are more excited about them and happier about them than most people because you have the darkest place to compare them to and that makes them even more spectacular than they already are. You radiate your positive energy in these moments into the lives of the people around you. They appreciate life more because you can show them life from your point of view.

You feel deeper.

You’ll appreciate things more, especially the small stuff.

Yes, you analyze everything. Yes, this leads to you being sad or upset for no reason over the smallest of things. But flip it around. When you’re down and a bird chirps a song, you can smile for hours about how happy that bird is and how beautiful the world is that it could create that beautiful bird. You find the small things in life and you analyze them. You think deeper about the beautiful things in life too. You see a tree and think what if we didn’t have trees. We would all not be able to live. No, not good. But we have trees. And these trees are beautiful and they give us life and the way they work on a biological level is amazing and wow, thank you trees.

You appreciate more.

In the future you’ll be a better parent.

No, you will not be so worried that your child isn’t allowed to do normal things. So no, your child will not be banned from riding a bike. Yes, he/she will have a helmet on. Yes, if your child is sick you may take him/her to the doctor sooner than someone else would, and you’ll ask more questions. But what if that ends up being something that saves his/her life? Yes, you’ll worry about those bullies at school that are picking on your child. But you won’t just let it happen or tell your child to not pay attention to it and brush it off. You will help them stick up for themselves and be strong and get through it. Yes, you will worry more when your child is upset but you won’t just let them be upset. You will talk to them and make sure they are okay and have deep life advice to give them. You will know your child on a deeper level. Your child may have an anxiety disorder and may feel all of the things that you feel. And guess who will be the better parent to that child? Someone without anxiety? No. You will.

You will be the best parent (shout-out to my mom).

It’ll keep you safe.

Yes, you will still climb those literal mountains, but you will be sure all of your gear is working properly and not broken even if you do check it a million times. Yes, you will look both ways before you cross the street every time. But guess what? You saved a friend's life by doing that already. Yes, you will jet ski and sky dive and hang over the edge of a cliff but you won’t be an idiot and do it in an unsafe way without learning and being with professionals and making damn sure that cliff is the sturdiest rock you’ve ever seen in your life. Yes, you will jump off waterfalls and ski double black diamonds but there won’t be rocks and shallow water at the bottom because you already checked that. And you’ll own the best helmet for skiing so when you fall you’ll get right back up with no harm done. No, you won’t break body parts or die a stupid way because you weren’t careful while doing something fun yet somewhat risky. You’ll live to tell the stories and won’t have a scar on you.

You will do all of the crazy things you want to in life, but you won’t be reckless.

You know yourself on a deeper level than most people know themselves.

You’ve been inside your head on all of the different levels and floors and down all of the side roads and small hallways and secret passageways hidden in the back and to the left. You know yourself. You know how you think, you know why you think and you know what will make you think. Yes, this doesn’t all sound so pleasant doing this and knowing this 100 percent of the time. But its not 100 percent, maybe just 95. But you know yourself. You know what you can and cannot do and what will keep you sane and exactly what will cheer you up. You know the person you wish to become and the things you want in life. The things you want to try even though you think you’ll fail. You do them anyway and cry tears of joy when you accomplish them because you know even more about yourself now and are closer to becoming the person you wish to become. You’ll dig to those deep levels and come up stronger than you were before. You will find deeper meaning in yourself and in your life.

You’ll love yourself more just as I continue to do everyday.