My mother once told me that I cried hysterically the day my father died, but once the tears had stopped, I was completely normal again. As if, nothing had happened. Looking back now, I realize how conflicting that behavior was to the immense inner turmoil I was going through, and continued to go through, for not days, not months, but over the entirety of the next decade. Slowly but steadily, I developed post-traumatic symptoms that soon translated to PTSD, followed by full-blown Obsessive Compulsion Disorder. For a long time I didn’t even know what it was, but when I did, the disease had already gone too far deep within me. The thing about living with a disease like that, it slowly becomes a part of your life, even a part of you, if you are not careful. While my ailments have certainly disabled me as a person, they have also helped me gain some deep insight about life. Here are the 5 most important lessons that I learned from being a victim of chronic anxiety and stress disorder: