A few years ago, I had this nagging feeling, I’m not sure where it came from. It was a whisper. “What if?”. I hadn’t really had this feeling before. I didn’t know how to identify it, so I ignored it, and just went on with the general day to day of what I consider an amazing life.
That voice got louder as time went on, sometimes deafening. Through some research and appointments with professionals, my voice found a name. It was called anxiety. I initially was in a state of denial. Like many people in this country (1 in 5), I was being told I had anxiety. I wasn’t sure what to do with this new information.
Over the years, I looked for any reason I could find that would explain the “why” of anxiety. It took a very long time to come to the conclusion that the “why” doesn’t really matter. What matters is, I had to figure out how to live with my new friend. And as anybody reading this with anxiety knows, some days living with this new friend feels like it’s impossible. I would like to share what a really hard day looks like for me, not to make it about me, but to possibly relate to anybody out there who feels alone.
When anxiety is truly amped up, it feels like all things in my life are failing at once. If feels like I’m a cork in an ocean. My hands get tense and clinch. Sometimes I have to lay down and crawl into a ball.
What sets it off varies greatly. A comedian once said anxiety was like having an improv group in your head that could take any thought, and make it seem real. That is what it feels like for me. The irrational thing is that you could have Bill Nye the science guy sitting in front of you proving to you that the thought that is spinning out of control in your head isn’t valid. He could offer proof after proof. And it doesn’t matter. That will seem so outrageous to those that have never felt anxiety like this before. But for those that suffer from anxiety, this probably sounds somewhat familiar.
So lets get back to how to hang out with the new friend. If there isn’t much you can do to convince yourself that the thought isn’t real, what can you do? I have met with people who specialize in this field, with varying degrees of success. The method that seems to work for me the most, is to constantly remind myself that I will be okay.
What that looks like for me starts with my recognizing that I’m in the middle of an anxiety attack. That is pretty easy, because it doesn’t feel like anything else I’ve ever experienced. Once I’ve identified it, what I’ve begun to do is to breath into it. Identify that it is my “new friend” and, most importantly, say to myself, I’m going to be okay. This isn’t real. Or if it is a blown out of proportion version of something that is real, I may change my tactics to understand that there is something that has happened that is important, but that I know how to solve it, and that it will eventually be solved.
Leaning in, and acknowledging has been a huge thing for me. Let me emphasis, this isn’t to say it’s easy. It has also been VERY difficult for me to just accept that it’s part of my life now. But I have gotten there. I’m now just who I was, with a new friend. This friend has the ability to put focus on things I may have not focused on enough. This friend also has the ability to want too much attention. I am learning on what dialog works the best for my new friend. Each day that vocabulary gets richer.
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