I was treated for extreme anxiety for much of my life, which technically makes me someone who suffered from mental illness.

This is a scary word for many people but a liberating one for me.

(Sign above – from the Wizard Of Oz)

I have always been functional, even thriving, but too often, panic and fear caused me to behave impulsively and make poor, sometimes disastrous,  decisions about my life.

The great thing about being mentally ill is that I get to recover every day, and so many people can’t do that with the illnesses that strike them down.

I have been recovering for so long that I’m good at it now and weary of it, and am ready to move on.

But I always have to keep an eye on myself. There is no total cure for any mental illness that I know; it can pop up when you least expect it or are triggered in some way.

I don’t allow myself to get lazy or too cocky. I’ve been humbled too many times.

I have a close relationship with a therapist who has worked with me for nearly 20 years. She, along with Maria, has helped to bring me to a safe and sound place, helped me live with my fear, and, to a great extent, conquer it and live around it.

I’ve never felt better or been better. I told my therapist a decade ago that I refused to end my life in that fearful way, and whatever happens, I think I’ve achieved that goal.

Fear really is geography, a space to cross.

One of the things that frightened me throughout my life was money; I never learned how to understand it or deal with it until a few years ago.

Issues relating to money always panicked me; I always handed them off to other people. I think I picked this up from my mother, who was always terrified of cash (of not having enough. She never did have enough.)

I rarely panicked over the things that should have frightened me – TV appearances, book tours, publishing, writing well, finding love, a failing marriage, parenting,  and the absence of anything like security or a regular income.

I always knew I could make my way in the world, even if it weren’t always pretty.

During one money panic, my therapist surprised me by saying that the panic was not about money and was never about money. “You’ve made money all of your life,” she said. “You know how to do that.”

I do know how to do that, and I always have. I navigated the very treacherous world of publishing for decades; you can’t be too crazy to do that.

I also knew never to allow myself to be a slave to money or let it dominate my life. I don’t wish to be a slave to anything. Money is one of the worst slave masters.

I knew to do what I loved and hang onto that right through to the end.

Suddenly, my therapist had almost casually dismissed one of the cornerstone emotions of my life. She turned me upside down.

So what, I asked, was the panic about? “It’s quite simple, she said. You were traumatized as a child and were treated properly for that. The panic is about that, not money.” What frightened me, she said, was the trauma, not the money.

This was a big idea for me, and I resisted it, and then slowly and painfully, and laboriously came to understand the truth of it.

And that understanding, more than anything else, has helped me to put this anxiety behind me and live my good life.

I can’t control what happens to me; I can only repeat again and again that I am happy now and live a loving and meaningful life. Living in the moment became my path to health.

That’s more than most people on the earth can say about illness, and I recognize my good fortune and need to be grateful.

My therapist’s message was and is transformative to me.

Underneath all the fear, worry, shame, anger, and the problem was not physical at all.

There were emotional, psychological, social, spiritual, and trauma issues that caused me so much stress and fear.

When I wake up in fright at night, Maria looks me in the eye and says, “this is not about money. This is about the childhood trauma that lives inside of you.”

I’ve heard it again and again. I’m starting to believe it.

I see now that my fear was almost never about what I thought it was about.  I began to ask the right questions about myself in my meditation, treatment, and contemplation.

I’ve found the right question to worry about.

What can I do at this point in my life to finally become the human being I wanted to be and was meant to be while there is still time?

That has nothing to do with money or the other things I panicked about.

Anna Freud once wrote that the fear in us could often be the first sign of life we experience. It was the first sign of life that I had experienced.

It stirred, pursued, and motivated me to face myself, get help, and work to change.

Now, it comes down to this.

I am much more than my fear and have always been more. But I understand all too well that learning and accepting can take a lifetime.

When I  wake up at 4 a.m. and sometimes feel a surge of terror, as long-time bedwetters are prone to do when they are older, I choose not to fear the fear.

It is that difficult and it is that simple. It is never easy.