Often, when we are overwhelmed with anxiety, we lose the sense of ease that we might usually have. When this happens many of us feel the need to be in control. This is a perfectly normal reaction to anxiety but we can only control what we can control. The things that we cannot control are out of our hands and as frightening or disappointing that they are, or seem to be, we can only accept them. We learn radical acceptance. What else can we do? At times we have no other choice. This is the gift of reality and reality can be difficult. There is one reality that many of us do discover in one day at a time recovery and it is that we have the right to own these difficult times and the right to know we are not out of our minds. We have lost our sense of ease and the need to be in control is a perfectly normal desire but as others have told us – “Accept what we cannot change – courage to change what we can – and may we have the wisdom to know the difference”
