The idea for this post came to me today while I was surfing the web. I suddenly asked myself if I was keeping myself from being anxiety free. After I posed this question to myself I concluded that I was, partially.
I don’t think that anyone keeps themselves anxious because quite frankly this would be pure lunacy. However I wondered if my long suffering with anxiety had conditioned my body and mind so much toward anxiety that I not only expect to be anxious most of the time but also find that being anxious is my normal state of being (low level anxiety).
Do you ever find that when your calm for too long that you question why or when you’ll become anxious again? It’s almost like your telling yourself, "no seriously it’s going to come any day now". There is just no way that you could really be anxiety free or so it seems most of the time.
This whole thought popped into my head when I became very anxious over a very minimal event. I lost it there for a few minutes and when I returned to earth so to speak I started to ponder this question.
In a way, and I’m only speaking for myself, I’ve certainly been a barrier when it comes to being anxiety free. Although I think this is done unconsciously I know I do it nonetheless. I mean to say that by this point in my life I have acquired, processed, and retained so much information about anxiety disorder(s) that you would think that I could finally just kill the damn thing.
But no, it’s still there, mostly silent, but very much there. O.K. problem in hand I thought what can I do about it? I have thoroughly educated myself on the matter, I know what to do, what now? Could this really be a life long deal? Could Paul just never be like he used to be before anxiety interrupted then dominated his life?
Well we all know that for some of us this will be the case but that being so how can we get out of our own way? I’ll tell you this much something like 80%-90% of my anxiety lies in my thoughts. In other words random palpitations and chest pain only account for a very small percentage of my anxiety. It’s the worry, the anxious thought patterns, and incessant ‘what if’ scenarios that nourish my neurosis.
The overwhelming source of my own anxious state always begins with some random thought that gives rise to a fear, which makes the fear into a worry, so on and so forth. Being that I can’t tell my brain to shut up what then?
I can exercise, eat well, take supplements, meditate, and after all this still feel bad sometimes. This is my vulnerability, the thing that keeps me coming back to the alter of "please no more anxiety", which I am not afraid to share. I feel good most of the time but I invariably get anxious.
Is there any insight that could stop this or like Sherwin Nuland do we simply tell ourselves "Ah F**k It" from time to time? Do we just have to constantly and forever remind ourselves that we are o.k., that we aren’t dying all the time, that we aren’t losing our minds? I think so.
I am stopping myself from being anxiety free but paradoxically I can’t stop it. I’ll just have to ride it out and see what happens. Continue my search for new and better ways of coping and hopefully one day relieve myself of this burden.
I am right there with you, exactly. We have it figured out in that sense that we understand what it does. As for what causes it, it has to be awareness of our mortality. And that won’t go away, o well. Stop fueling it and it will quiet down