I frequently work with people who are struggling to deal with negative emotions; anger, fear, jealousy, grief. Our culture trains us to avoid and/or deny negative emotions and we seem to believe that we have a right not to have to experience them. This belief causes a lot of unnecessary struggle which often manifests itself as "anxiety".
I say "anxiety" because it is not really anxiety but fear. Fear of pain. Fear of suffering. Fear of being unhappy or uncomfortable. Our anxiety is really the fear of experiencing painful emotions. Other cultures understand that facing adversity and experiencing negative emotions help us grow. But we fight to avoid them and seem to think life should always be happy. This is not a realistic view of the human experience. This is not how life works. Life has its ups and downs and human emotions respond to these ups and downs. We have good days and bad day, good years and bad years. We win, we lose. We rejoice, we cry. We love, we hate. To experience only half of our emotions, the "good" ones, deprives us of life's full experience.
Now this may be hard to hear when you are in the middle of an extremely painful situation. But talk to your elders. Talk to someone who has experienced adversity. Having experienced it and come out on the other side, they have grown stronger and wiser. Life is richer for having experienced the good and the bad. The "simple things" in life are richer and have more meaning.
Refusing to face the pain drives us to use unhealthy behaviors to avoid the pain. "Take a pill" they say and you will be happy. But pills don't make the pain go away, they only numb it. And you have to keep taking the pills to maintain the anesthesia. Then you develop anxiety about running out of the pills, or worry that the pills will quit working. Alcohol, food, sex, shopping, the latest gadgets, accumulating wealth, keeping up with the Joneses, acquiring power or social status - we can use all of these distractions and more to anesthetize the real emotions, but these distractions often cause even more problems of their own.
Failing to experience the pain also robs us of personal strength and wisdom, strength and wisdom we will need more and more as we age. When we avoid experiencing the pain, we do not learn two things: 1) that we can survive the pain and 2) coping skills for living through painful situations. As we age we will have to face numerous and ever increasing adversities; divorce, death, loss of friends and family, loss of our own health, the end of our own life. How will we know how to deal with these things if we haven't developed the skills as we go through our younger lives?
Feel your feelings, walk through the pain, turn and face the fear. You'll be amazed at what you can survive. You'll be amazed at how freeing it truly is. You'll be amazed at how much richer your life will be.