The Mind Racing Reality Of Anxiety

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Anxiety, to me, is the tightness I feel in between the base of my neck and my shoulder blades. It’s when my mind runs a thousand miles an hour and I have to sit down and write to process my thoughts, it’s constantly tapping and moving, it’s staying up late at night because something has me nervous, or spooked, or worried. It is having trouble stepping outside of myself and seeing a situation for what it is. It is constant repetition and layers on layers of creating ridiculous situations that wont happen. Anxiety means not making sense, it’s having friends who struggle to keep up with rapid fire thoughts and statements. It’s reading this paragraph as fast as you can and stumbling over words but your mind wont let you stop.

Anxiety is figuring out how to deal with it.

It means sitting down in the middle of the day with a notebook asking myself these questions about the things I’m worrying about:

1.What’s the evidence for the situation? Why do I feel this way?

2.What’s the worst or best thing that could come from the situation?

3.What would I say to a friend that came to me with the same situation?

4. Am I creating a worse case scenario and calling it “being realistic?”

It means planning out an extra half an hour before bed to think about my day and what stress can be dealt with and released.

It means doing yoga, focusing on breathing, and practicing visualization.

It means reading through the purple sheet my counselor gave me full of stress management techniques, and distressing just from laughing over the ridiculousness of some of them:

  • Watch boyfriend change oil (someone loan me a boyfriend..and a car?)
  • Square dance (no.)
  • Toilet Paper a house (illegal)
  • Hold a baby (anyone have a baby to offer me?)
  • Smoking (I’d probably get anxiety over the possibility of an early death)

It means doing things from the list that aren’t completely unfeasible:

  • Take a hot shower
  • Color
  • Mentor
  • Knit
  • Learn a new song on the guitar
  • Lay on the floor and focus on the music

Finally, having anxiety means working really really hard to remember, that at the end of the day you are okay, you have always been okay in tough situations, and you will be okay tomorrow.