Facing Your Past Anxieties
Dealing with old anxieties is hard work, and the frustrating part is that it never seems finished. You think you've worked through the whole list, then some fresh worry shows up out of nowhere. When that happens to me I turn snappish. I get unreasonable with the people around me, short-tempered, and I pull away from everyone. The fears that surface can be almost anything: doubt about who you are, worry that you're about to wreck a relationship, whatever you've been avoiding.
For about five years now I've been going at this hard, mostly through mindfulness and meditation. Both have helped me look my old fears in the face. What they haven't done is make those fears disappear for good, and I've stopped expecting them to.
At some point you have to build your own working ideas about how your mind operates, try them out, and pay attention to whether they actually hold up. For me that has meant trying to keep a positive outlook and easing off on the harsh judgments, the ones I aim at myself as much as at other people. The method matters less than the effort. You might get there through self-help reading, through a group, or by sitting down with a therapist or counselor. Some people say their faith already does this for them.