Opinion piece by Barbara Lee
I started therapy because of anxiety. My therapist was great — within the first few sessions, she had already taught me a toolkit of practical techniques to help during the hardest moments: grounding exercises, focused breathing, simple anchors to bring me back to the present when panic started pulling me under.
On paper, it all made sense. I understood the theory. I even practiced the techniques at home, determined to have them ready when I really needed them. But when the panic actually hit — when that heavy, suffocating wave of anxiety crashed over me — I could never bring myself to use any of it.
Every session, my therapist would ask:
"Did you try the breathing?"
"Did you do the grounding exercise?"
And every time, my answer was the same:
"No."
Not because I didn't believe in the methods. Not because I didn't want to feel better. There was just this strange paralysis inside me — an invisible wall standing between me and the act of helping myself. I remember how frustrated that made me. I felt like I was even failing at therapy. Other people could meditate, do breathing exercises, tune into their bodies — and I couldn't even manage five slow, deep breaths.
There were moments when I seriously considered quitting. What was the point of going to therapy if I couldn't even do the basics? Looking back, I'm so glad I didn't walk away after those early failures.
The breakthrough didn't come from a breathing exercise
It came from a single sentence.
During one session, we were talking — again — about how I'd failed to use the techniques when I needed them most. It wasn't easy, but I finally said out loud what had been building inside me: I was thinking about stopping therapy altogether. I felt like we weren't making progress, and that it was entirely my fault. "Why am I even here if I don't want to help myself?"
The moment those words left my mouth, something shifted. I heard myself — really heard myself — for the first time. And I think that was the moment I finally understood what was actually happening inside me. It wasn't laziness. It wasn't resistance. It wasn't that I "didn't want to get better." It was something much sadder than that.
In my darkest moments, I disliked myself so deeply that I didn't even want to offer myself help.
That realization was devastating. But it was also, strangely, a relief. Suddenly, all that paralysis made sense. All that internal resistance I'd never been able to explain had a name. The techniques hadn't failed because they were wrong — they had failed because, in that state, I didn't believe I deserved to be rescued from my own suffering.
That insight changed everything. But the next step wasn't learning to love myself in those moments — that would have been far too big a leap. If someone had told me to repeat affirmations about my worth and lovability, I probably would have just felt angry.
For me, it started with something much smaller.
My therapist said it simply: "You don't have to love yourself right away. You just have to try to be compassionate with yourself."
That felt like something I could actually do
Compassion doesn't demand that you suddenly see everything about yourself as good and beautiful. It doesn't require full self-acceptance. It only asks that when you're suffering, you don't completely turn away from yourself.
At first, even that was hard. Sometimes it still is. But slowly, I started learning to treat myself at the peak of anxiety not like someone who deserves punishment — but like someone who is simply having a hard time.
And that's when the techniques started working.
Once I stopped feeling like I didn't deserve the help, I could finally sit down and breathe. I could notice five things around me. I could bring myself back to the present. Not always perfectly, not always quickly — but the paralysis no longer had a complete hold on me.
This isn't a finished story. There's still a long road ahead — understanding where these feelings come from, what feeds them, and whether they can ever be fully resolved. Some of it, I may simply have to learn to live with.
But something has already changed.
Anxiety hasn't disappeared from my life. But I no longer feel completely powerless against it. And when I think about where I started — in a place where I couldn't even accept help from myself — that already feels like something worth celebrating.
