It’s another high anxiety day again.
These things happen. Some days I wake up and my heart is pulsing harder than usual, making me too wired and too tired at the same time. Sometimes it’s like a stone is lodged deep in my windpipe, making breathing a struggle.
It’s often tempting to take the day off, stay in bed, and focus on self-comfort. But reality doesn’t always allow that luxury, and it rarely helps anyway.
I’m not sure how other people who feel anxiety, feel it – is it different for each person? Does it change every time? For me, it often acts as a compass, pointing at the scariest thing in my life right now.
And addressing that thing, of course, is the only way to truly let the anxiety go.
I say, ‘of course’, but I’m sure it’s not evident to a lot of people – at least, it wasn’t evident to me for a LONG time. Some days, when the courage is lacking, I still fall back to old patterns.
It’s f**king scary to leave one’s comfort zone, scary to follow that trail of fear back to the source. Intellectually we may understand that the ‘man behind the curtain’ is the one running the show, but that doesn’t make the fear any less real.
For me, the demon I most frequently encounter is work. Somehow in my earlier days on earth, I became convinced that having to delay gratification with an activity that wasn’t immediately satisfying was just the worst thing ever.
I even sometimes find myself doing things I enjoy LESS, simply because I used to enjoy them more. I like working on music more than watching YouTube videos for example, but sometimes I just want to do it anyway.
Work involving new endeavours elicits even more terror. If I don’t try to do anything new, I don’t have to find out how sh*tty I am at doing it, right?
So goes the logic. But that doesn’t make the pain go away. Doing the work does. Yes, it hurts more initially. And then, when I don’t immediately drop dead or spontaneously combust, it gently ebbs away.
Over time, and with enough successes, I believe any of us can start to see the pattern; to recognize when we are lying to ourselves and the mental tricks that will motivate ourselves to push through the fear.
It might require very small steps at first. There was a time when speaking to ANY girl was an absolute nightmare for me for example.
To say nothing of larger social gatherings…
I eventually managed – barely -to say ‘hi’. That progressed into longer conversations, then flirting, then dating… And hey, look at me now! I’m married y’all!
There is an art to scaling your courage, building confidence through shifting pebbles of your existence and gradually working your way up to mountains. It’s also a personal journey, meaning it’s up to you to find out how much stress your psyche can take in one go.
If I can share one personal tip though: Err on the side of less stress, rather than more. Working at your mental limit is like betting on the most profitable – but riskiest – stocks. Sooner or later, a bad day is going to push you over the limit, and then it’s break time until you can put yourself back together again.
Besides.. you do want to enjoy this journey, don’t you?
Credits:
‘Person Sitting on Couch’ by Pixabay from Pexels
‘Person Standing Between Tall Trees Surrounded by Fogs’ by Gabriela Palai from Pexels
‘Woman in Red T-shirt Looking at Her Laptop’ by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels