Advice and Ways I can cope with anxiety and loss

Hello and thank you for asking a question here on BetterHelp. Your question is about anxiety but it also sounds like this anxiety is twofold, there's the anxiety you've always had to deal with and then there is this new anxiety over the loss of your grandfather and not being able to say goodbye to him. We're gonna talk about each of those and how to process and deal with it, but I also think it's really important that we talk a little bit about therapy itself first. 

When we are stuck in a cycle of anxiety for a very long time, it becomes more and more difficult for us to get out of it on our own. Similarly, when we go through a traumatic loss it is a very difficult situation to handle, and there's nothing wrong with getting a little help as you journey through the different stages of grief. Because of these two things I would definitely recommend that you talk with a therapist. It's very easy to get linked with a therapist here on BetterHelp, all you have to do is click on the get started button on the homepage and follow the prompts from there. After you answer some questions about yourself you will be automatically linked to a therapist, if you don't like the therapist you're automatically linked with, then you're more than welcome to choose one on your own. A therapist can help you recognize barriers in your life you didn't even know existed, help you pick up on toxic relationships that you made if that were completely normal, and one of the most important things I can do is help you recognize the source of your anxiety.  I hope you'll consider getting linked with a therapist soon. 

Whenever it comes to anxiety I encourage the people I work with to think about it through the lens of fear, fear is the great driver of anxiety. This means if you are able to identify what your fear is, then take away the power that fear has over you, then you will drastically reduce or take away your anxiety. If you were sitting in front of me in a counseling session right now I would ask you, "before the loss of your grandfather, what things were you afraid of that were causing your anxiety? What type of situations were you in? Who were the people that you were around?" I would ask you all of these questions and we would work through these specifically to identify what that fear is. Sometimes a fear like this would stem from something that happened in your childhood, or it could simply be a reaction to something you saw on social media. Once you identify the fear then we can put it into two categories, it is either a fear that is possible or a fear that is probable. A fear that is possible is the best one to push back on, and typically the most common fear that can easily become out of control. Let me give you an example, I live close to an international airport and it is technically possible that one of those airplanes taking off could crash into my home, however it is highly unlikely. But the more I think about how I could warn myself, think about how I could get my family out of the home, what do I need to do to update my home insurance, how can I prevent this from happening etc. The more I fixate on it, the more that fear goes from being possible to being probable. And now that is a fear that will begin to cause a lot of anxiety and easily become out of control. The way you push back on that is with truth and facts, you write them down, you remind yourself of them constantly, reminding yourself that you are focusing on a fear that is merely possible but not probable. But let's take it to the other side, what if the fear is probable, then it becomes something that you must get prepared for. If a fear of yours is likely to happen then you must prepare yourself, doing so will reduce your anxiety.  Example, I used to have bad anxiety when I first started driving that I would pop a tire and not know how to handle the situation (this was before everybody had a cell phone), so what I did is I practiced changing a tire in my parents driveway and my anxiety was instantly gone, because I was now prepared if it ever happened.
The anxiety and stress that is around the death of your grandfather is a little bit more complicated, but it's still something that you can resolve. The first and most important step is that you allow yourself to experience the grief, the five stages of grief exist for a reason and there is nothing wrong with you experiencing all of them. The goal for you is to reach acceptance, recognizing that he is gone and that he would want the best for you. And for you to live your life and enjoy yourself, but it takes time to get there and there is nothing wrong with that. I tell people that I work with that grief is like a finger print, it is different and unique for everybody but they all look a little similar. With his loss I want you to focus on two things, forgiving yourself for not being able to say goodbye (because he would want you to and it is not fair for you to beat yourself up over it), and the second thing I want you to do is to celebrate your grandfather. You can do this by visiting his grave and thanking him, you can do this by writing him a letter and saying goodbye the way you wanted to, you can do this by going to your Nan's house and talking about how wonderful he was. There are endless ways for you to celebrate him, pursue those and have gratitude for the impact that he had in your life.

I wish you the best on this journey and I hope you were able to find some thing in here that helps!