“Anxiety is the vertigo of freedom.” ~Søren Kierkegaard
Let’s be clear:
This is not an article about positive thinking.
This is not an article about how silver linings fix everything.
This is not an article about how your view of anxiety is wrong.
Kids call these things “toxic positivity.”
No toxic positivity here.
this is An article about my life Relationship with anxiety And I learned from something that won’t go away. At times the anxiety is heightened and almost crippling. I have a hard time appreciating learning at that point, but it’s still there.
That’s what this article is all about.
Please don’t confuse me with learning from something that won’t get me away with endorsing that thing or saying it’s a good thing. I would trade everything I learned from anxiety for less anxiety. I don’t even like writing about it because focusing on it gives me anxiety. But I want to write something that helps people.
How a bare butt spreads my anxiety
Stranger Things Showed how quiet the eighties were. For the most part, this is true. I miss the arcade and the music. I miss the freedom I had as a child that I don’t see in kids these days. I miss something in fashion. I don’t miss people who don’t know anything about mental health.
We played soccer every day after school at a baseball field/park in our small town. It was unsupervised tackle football with kids much older than me.
I remember once a guy broke his finger. It was pointing back at him at a ninety degree angle. He ran towards his house. An older child said, “He’s running to mommy!” And we all went back to the game.
Oddly enough, probably broken my The finger didn’t bother me. what did My thoughts were one day when a kid was running for a touchdown, and another kid dove to stop him. He simply grabbed the top of her pants, pulled them down and exposed her bare butt. He scored the touchdown anyway, but everyone else thought it was hilarious, it scared me to death.
What if that happens to me?
I started tying my pants with a string every day, pulling it tight enough to make my stomach hurt (remember, it was the eighties – I wore those neon-colored pajama-pants-looking things). We start feeling sick before soccer games, before school, and before everything.
You’d think it was obvious that I was dealing with anxiety, but you have to remember that in the eighties and nineties we didn’t talk about mental health like we do now. We don’t throw around terms like anxiety and the like depression. I was the weird kid who threw up before school.
Anxiety has become a little more noticeable in the past few years. It seems to have gotten worse since covid in 2020 and 2021. I don’t know if this is a thing, but it seems to be the case. It made me tackle it mentally and with more intention. It’s never pleasant, but I’ve learned a few things.
1. Anxiety taught me to be present.
The crushing presence of high anxiety forces me to be exactly where I am in that moment. I can’t read or write. I can’t play any video games or watch movies with any kind of pleasure. I can’t do anything.
Roots me in the moment in a very intense, authentic way. This may sound bad as far as I’m concerned, but there’s another layer to it. When I can be fully present with the physiological sensations of anxiety, I realize that they are energy in the body. When I’m too present, I see how my mind is turning those sensations into emotions that we call anxiety, and that’s where my pain comes from.
2. Anxiety taught me about control.
I’ve been told that I have to be hyper-independent and ready for anything trauma response. I’ve been a therapist for ten years, and I still don’t know what to do with this information. I know that anxiety gives me a crash course in what I can and can’t control.
The bad news is that I can’t control any of the things that I think cause anxiety. The good news is that I can control my reactions to all of those things. Anxiety makes me do this very deliberately.
Worry also keeps my mind firmly on something bigger than myself. Maybe it’s the higher power we hear at AA meetings and awards shows. It’s good for me to be out of my head and remember that I’m not in charge of anything. It is the only box supporter in my weight class.
3. Anxiety teaches me to have good habits and boundaries.
I am bad at allowing my habits and boundaries to slip when times are good. I start eating poorly, I stop exercising, I stay up too late, and I watch a bunch of shows and movies that pour darkness and confusion straight into my head.
I began to allow unhealthy and even toxic people to have a more prominent role in my life. It’s under the guise of helping them because people reach out to me a lot. Over the years, I’ve learned to limit how close I let the most toxic people get to me, no matter how much they need help.
When I feel good, I start to think that I can handle anything, and mine border Sleep anxiety is always a reminder that unhealthiness has consequences in my life and when it escalates I clean house.
4. Anxiety reminds me how important growth is.
Once I clean the house, I start looking at new projects and things I can do to feel better. I begin to take the next step towards who I want to be. The past three years have been tough because the waves of anxiety have been so intense, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel as the good habits I’ve put in place and the new projects and things I’ve started are starting to pay off.
I chose to lay off my counseling license and focus on life coaching because it’s less stressful, and I’m better at it. It wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for anxiety. I’ve changed my diet and exercise in response to blood pressure and anxiety, and these are good habits whether I’m anxious or not.
5. Anxiety has taught me to be gentle.
I have written and spoken a lot about my desire to be gentle with people. i don’t mercilessAnd I have a lot of compassion for people, but it’s often expressed harshly or very directly. That’s how I grew up, and I often feel like I’m patronizing people if I walk in verbal circles when I try to help them with something.
I feel vulnerable when I experience high anxiety, which helps me understand how other people might feel in the face of my ambivalence. I started working on getting leaner around 2018, and I was disappointed in my progress.
Around that year too, anxiety began to become a constant in my life again. When I look back now, I recognize that I am very gentle with everyone around me when I am concerned. Being a little fragile helps me treat everyone else a little more carefully.
6. Anxiety taught me to slow down and ask for help.
When I start to feel increased anxiety, it leads me to make quick decisions and change things to try to deal with it. This makes sense. Evolutionarily, anxiety is meant to motivate us to action.
The problem was that these decisions rarely turned out to be my best and often led to other outcomes that I had to deal with down the line. Because of this, I’ve learned that an anxiety spike is not the time to make big decisions.
If I have to make a decision, I slow down and try to be very deliberate about it. I also learned that I needed to talk to someone else, something I never wanted to do. Asking for help is a good thing.
7. Anxiety helps me speed up.
Yes, yes, yes, the opposite of what I said.
Let me be clear.
One of the most important quotes I’ve ever read came from folk singer Joan Baez: “Action is the antidote to anxiety.” (A few years later, I learned that he said frustration instead of anxiety, but that was the first time I heard it).
Some jobs bring anxiety that I don’t want to deal with. These usually involve phone calls or emails to bureaucratic agencies, or tasks that seem unpleasant and anxiety-inducing to me (it also makes sense to avoid them—our evolutionary heritage doesn’t understand why we’d do things that might feel dangerous).
Over the years, I’ve learned that anxiety decreases if I take the necessary steps to deal with these tasks. The nice thing is that it has translated into many of my daily tasks.
By acting in the face of anxiety, I got pretty good at getting things done when they needed to be done. I mow the lawn when it needs to be mowed, take out the trash when it needs to be taken out, put the laundry up when it needs to be put away, and change the oil in my truck when it needs to be changed.
Once we start addressing tasks immediately, it becomes a habit. Anxiety helped me do this.
Anxiety still sucks
So there you go. Seven things anxiety has taught me. I’m grateful for these lessons, but they don’t make the anxiety any less difficult right now.
Worry means sucking. It’s meant to make things difficult and uncomfortable for us until we do something to fix the problem. The problem, unfortunately, these days is often unaddressable.
We worry about things like losing our jobs, not having enough money, getting divorced, and the general state of the world. Anxiety isn’t meant to solve any of these things, so sometimes comforting discomfort is all we can offer ourselves.
Maybe that’s the last thing anxiety is teaching me.
about James Scott Henson
James is a writer who wants to help people overcome challenges and make important changes in their lives. She has worked for over twenty years as a social worker, meditation teacher and licensed professional counselor. Finding his home in Life coachingHe helps others achieve their goals and create the life they want. As a writer, James shares helpful posts substackWriting thousands of words every month to inspire, challenge and inspire his customers
