The Anxiety of it All

Dear 20 somethings,

We are now 7 days into the new year, and I hope that all of you are flourishing in your goals and plans. Day 6, for me, was a little bit rocky. For as long as I can remember, I have always been anxiety-prone. I remember when I was younger, I used to worry about any and everything. It was one time in particular when I was younger, and my aunt had gone to the hospital, and they told her that she had a heart murmur. I didn’t know what the hell a heart murmur was. However, my mom kept it from me because she knew how big of a thing it would be and how much I would possess over it. And the fact that she was trying to do that, and I noticed she was trying to do that, combined with the fact that I didn’t know what it was, amplified my anxiety. I mean, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I was worried that her heart was going to implode or something like that. I remember wanting to call her every 30 seconds to make sure she was alive; it was terrible.

As an adult, I find that my anxiety is worse, maybe because I have more knowledge of the world and how bad things can actually get. As a child, you don’t really know that much and the potential of things. I do an okay job of keeping it from spiraling, but it’s still from day to day. Sometimes I wake up, and I am worried about everything. Sometimes, I can go to bed and not be able to sleep. And some days I am excellent. Yesterday morning I woke up, and I was worried about this one thing that brought me to tears; and in retrospect, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but at that moment, the amount of worry was overwhelming. I was trying to calm myself, and I just couldn’t get there. My normal calming techniques weren’t working for me.

I laid in my bed for a little longer, tried talking to my best friend. I ended the call and laid there staring into space, trying to pull something out of the emotion that I felt to see if I could find another way to pull myself out of this state. In lying there, I said to myself, “what is it about this that has you so worried and so overwhelmed?” Often it’s me anticipating the negative that could happen. So, I said to myself, “think about the facts of the situation?” “What facts do you have?” I went over them in my head, and I asked myself, “ what about this leads you to believe that what you have in your head is going to happen?” And it was nothing except experiences from the past, but nothing from this in particular. It took a moment to wrap my head around it. When I always worried about something, my grandfather would tell me, “don’t worry about it until you have to?” That’s so much easier said than done with those who deal with anxiety, but as it started to settle, I found it very impactful. All of the anxiety around this isn’t gone, but I definitely feel a little better. And it doesn’t mean that what I anticipate to happen in my head won’t happen, but until I have reason to worry, I should breathe and look at the facts.

Do any of you deal with anxiety? How do you pull yourself out? What are your techniques? Talk to me.

AlexandriaB

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