I feel great fear. Do you? How do you cope?

[BoiledFinger]

Shamelessly posting here for traffic. I have quite bad anxiety today. I wonder if other sufferers can share their best tips. I have no family as I walked away from them, they were all too toxic. I'm not in a relationship, so it's just me here. This is ok, I'm not lonely. But I struggle with fear. I don't take any medications these days as they only increased suicidal feelings. Every time there is a change in my life I panic. I've had years and years of therapy so there's nothing new there you could recommend me. My upbringing was extremely violent and chaotic and this has left its' imprint in me. I'd like to hide away somewhere quiet for the rest of my life with no responsibilities but that's never going to happen. I hate feeling terrified. Developmental trauma is shit.

I have zero experience I'm afraid but am quite a "shoulders back, tits out, get on with it" kind of person. Looking at it from that viewpoint, can you make the quiet corner hideaway type thing happen? Is your financial situation such that you could move to a small town, find a little flat, get a relatively stress free quiet job (I'm not suggesting working from home because so much isolation I think would be detrimental) and just pootle about your life? Arrange as much as possible to happen remotely, use banking apps etc and carve out your quiet corner.

I feel it frequently and have had to adopt the "what would I do if I wasn't afraid?" mantra. and then do that.. regardless of how awful I find it. It does make things slightly easier the more you manage to do it and push through.

I also have the fear. I wake up with it each morning and have to remind myself that I am ok. I take medication now which really really helps - but it's not for everyone.

I was in my early 40s before I realised that other people weren't afraid of everything all the time.