Let’s Talk About Anxiety…
I’ll go first. It’s bloody awful, isn’t it?
I don’t know about you but when I feel anxious I’d get an awful tight feeling in my chest, my breathing feels strained; I become very aware of it, sometimes I shake. My thoughts race and go on repeat ‘what am I going to do, what am I going to do!’ Desperately searching for answers that seemed just out of reach.
If I tried harder, searched my brain more, I know that the answer would be there. It never is of course. What’s there is a never-ending search, more and more questions, no solutions. It’s a trap that’s easy to fall into.
A few mornings ago I felt anxious. I didn’t like it, I felt like I was going to die. I felt like I’d never feel ok again. I felt like I’d been feeling that way forever. It had been about 30 minutes, if that.
Anxiety pulls you into a distorted reality.
What I Do When I Feel Anxious
Do you want to know what I do when I feel anxious? I regulate my breathing, bringing it back to slow, deep breaths, filling my lungs, lovely deep breaths that cause yawns. I stop drinking my coffee because it really doesn’t help in these situations. I do what I need to do to help my mind in its quest to settle — our mind doesn’t like being anxious either, so it will try to settle itself. So if I start thinking of washing up — yep, I’m on it. If I start thinking of a swim — I’m on my way. If I start thinking of a nap — I’m ahead of you there!
Our minds will throw up these little ideas, easy ideas that we can take. It’s far better to take its advice and follow the mundane, the ordinary requests than it is to remain in mental confusion. No matter how tempting it is to stay, no matter how strong the urge is to solve these problems racing around your mind, and it’s strong, I know that.
It’s grounding, doing the ordinary stuff, it’s what we can do easily. It’s in the here and now. It takes us away from the complexities of the mind and seats us in real life. Real-life is where it’s at, it’s where we live and work from best and that’s where your mind will try to get you back to.
At some point, the anxiety will fade and disappear. Honestly, though, it’s going to go anyway, eventually, but why stay longer in a state that’s painful and unhelpful than you need to? We’re causing ourselves unnecessary suffering. It’s well known that chronic stress comes with its own set of mental and physical health issues, and they’re best avoided if possible.
Things I’ve Noticed About Anxiety
There are a few things that I’ve noticed about anxiety.
1) It’s not helpful. No matter how urgent, frantic and desperate my thoughts are, they are not helpful, ever.
2) Anxiety takes my attention and focus from what I’m doing in order to think, only think, about something I could be doing better, or to beat myself up about something, or to worry frantically.
3) It uses up a lot of energy.
4) The things that I feel so anxious about often magically disappear when the anxiety attack has passed. This doesn’t mean that all of my problems go away, some are still there and need to be dealt with, but, going back to 1) Anxiety is not helpful.
5) Sometimes I can see what’s going on and I can ignore it, sometimes I can see what’s going on and I can’t ignore it, and sometimes I can’t see it and I’m going to have a pretty shitty experience for a while. I’ll probably want to leave everything, run away, die, change job, unfriend everyone on Facebook because I hate myself and everything, and everyone feels too close and I can’t breathe and I’ll be thoroughly miserable for a while.
6) Anxiety wastes a lot of time.
7) It’s like a hurricane that seems to rise up from nowhere, it’s massively destructive, turns my entire world upside down, terrifies the living daylights out of me, and buggers off without me even noticing. However, as long as I haven’t acted on my anxious impulses, life should be the same as when I left it.
8) Its energy feels spiky, grating, like wasps. It’s not smooth, it rushes in, takes over, floors me until I recognise it.
9) Whatever my anxious thoughts are telling me at the time, my life continues on at its own pace. It’s like I’ve stepped out of it for a little while, gone to an alternate reality, freaked out, and have come back, feeling a bit dazed and confused.
10) It’s best if I don’t make any big decisions when I’m feeling anxious.
Imagination Working Overtime
My ‘interest’ in anxiety began when I had PTSD. It was all-consuming and hideous — the PTSD that is. As the PTSD symptoms dropped, the number of times I felt anxious dropped too, but they didn’t go altogether. Every now and again it would hit me again. To be honest, even writing about it I can feel a burning in my body and a tightness in my chest. It’s uncomfortable, my breathing doesn’t feel right. If I stay on this train of thought then I’m going to feel more anxious.
So I’ll close my eyes for a minute, possibly drop off for another couple of minutes and I’ll be right back…
Imagination is an amazing thing, when I write about something and describe it, I start to feel it, so I write from there. But that means that I’m feeling whatever it is that I’m writing about. Sometimes I lose myself in it for a little while because I forget that I’m using my imagination. I think we all forget that at times… We could also call anxiety an inappropriate and unhelpful use of our imagination.
Dealing With Anxiety
Dealing with anxiety, as I do now, didn’t happen overnight. I didn’t have a massive insight into how my mind was creating this experience and everything was hunk dory. Nope, it’s taken a while to get to a stage where I don’t see the point in feeling anxious. Step by step, layer by layer.
I do still feel anxious at times, and no, I don’t see the point in it, it doesn’t serve a purpose that I can find. I’m still going to do what I’m going to do, I really don’t need to take the shrill, piercing voice in my head seriously.
Because I don’t see the point in it I’m less likely to engage with it or take notice of it. Less likely, it still catches me out at times.
The thoughts that I get are ones that have been running through my brain for an awfully long time, they’re old and stale. I mean, how long am I going to believe that nothing I do is good enough, that I’m useless, that my world will end if I don’t do…..(choose any random thing to do), that I don’t know what I’m doing (in many contexts this is true, but it’s also not a bad thing).
I’m sure that you’re the same. If you listen to what’s going on in your mind when you’re feeling anxious, write it down even, read it afterwards, you’ll soon see that this stuff is insane!
I’ve noticed a lot about anxiety, and I mean a lot. Over time I’ve seen how thoughts can spiral down, mixing with awful feelings and leading us down to places where we have no need to ever go. I’ve seen how one thought can lead onto another, building up to a cascade of thoughts that will overwhelm my mind. I’ve noticed how anxiety lies, and whispers and shouts and screams.
You’re Not An Anxious Person, You Feel Anxious At Times
When I’m feeling anxious, I forget too that I’m not an anxious person, I’m a person feeling anxious.
If I were an anxious person then I’d avoid things that made me feel anxious, I’d want control over it. I’d limit my exposure to anxiety-raising situations, I’d make a point of letting people know that I was anxious, it would become part of me. Me and anxiety would walk hand in hand together. But it isn’t. It’s something that I feel at times. As it’s something that I feel at times it doesn’t have the same hold on me.
When I was an anxious person I’d let anxiety call the shots, it ruled my life. I’d only have to have the thought ‘I don’t like this’ or ‘I feel anxious’ and I’d stop, put whatever I was doing on the blacklist and not do it again.
This is how I became afraid of saying no, setting boundaries, saying anything that disagreed with another person. I was scared of all insects apart from ladybirds and money spiders; heights, depths, socialising, relationships, paperwork, writing my thoughts out for other people to read…. it ruled my life and made it smaller. Shrank it down to a size where I could barely function. It didn’t go away, it thickened around me, it spread, it infused everything.
And now I think it’s pointless….
