by: Philip McClelland, LPCC

We often try to kill what we are afraid of.

This goes double for dealing with our anxiety symptoms. We want to kill what we feel is making us anxious. More accurately, we want to kill that part of us that is causing all of those feelings.

Let me tell you a scary story.

There was a woman who was afraid of the monster in her closet. The closet wasn’t in her bedroom or hallway, but in her mind. Whenever things that reminded her of the past happened, the monster in her closet would break down the door and scream. The monster was hideous. It was covered in gore. The once hazel eyes were now murky with cataracts. The teeth were rotted and jagged. It was horrible and she hated the monster in her closet more than anything else. Every time the monster in the closet came out, she would try to kill it. The woman would stab the monster with a butcher knife. The woman would cut the monster down with a bloody chainsaw. The woman would grip her hands around the monster’s neck until the vertebrae snapped like dry twigs.

But the monster kept coming back like monsters always did in the slasher horror movies she grew up watching. One day, the woman was bone-tired and couldn’t kill the monster anymore. She put down her knife and laid down to wait for those rotted, jagged teeth to rip out her throat and take her gratefully into the abyss. But the rotted teeth never tore, and her blood didn’t splatter the floor. Instead, the monster in the closet just stood there staring. The woman got up and looked into the monster’s blind eyes and saw her own eyes looking back at her. Because she didn’t kill or run away, she could finally see the monster clearly now. What she had thought was a horrible old hag was really a little girl dressed up for Halloween. Like all little girls (and boys), all she really wanted was a hug and someone to tell her how awesome her costume was. The woman with tears in her eyes knelt down and hugged the little girl and told her what an awesome costume she had and realized…

…that the monster in the closet was her.

The monsters in our minds are terrifying. They scare us so badly. They make us so angry. We just want to kill and run away, but we can’t get away from our minds. So, we try all sorts of other ways of dealing just to make the screaming stop. It does, for a moment. But then it always comes back, louder than ever.

What if we too stopped killing or running. What if we took a good look at the monsters in our closets, peer under our beds, and see through the hideous costumes they are dressed in? We may find a little girl or boy in our minds that just needs a hug and to be told how awesome they are.

Face your fears. Hug a monster.