(original journal entry: January 2021)

*please note this post contains some “adult language”*

2023 update: Reflecting on this post I can see and imagine how angry and frustrated I was feeling at the time. I had been working with counsellors to help with my anxiety and depression and clearly this was not the best day for me. I have decided to include this post because I think it’s important to be able to look back and see how one “bad day” felt… so can appreciate how far have come and to remind ourselves to be grateful for situations we’ve had to overcome. Now on with the original journal entry…

Question of the day: What would you do if your brain was freed up from having anxious thoughts? Or at least, if one repetitive anxious thought stopped completely?

Below are some images and comparisons I have made regarding anxiety. As per usual, a stressful couple of weeks makes me rather creative!

Image/Example 1: Swimming out to a dinghy in the open ocean.

Picture this: You are out in the ocean and have been treading water for hours. You are exhausted! Thirsty, hungry, alone and fearful, you finally spot a dinghy. You are praising your lucky stars and swim to it. You get in and take a big, deep breath. You think just give me 5 minutes and I will start paddling to shore. All of a sudden a big wave comes and spits you off the dinghy and you’re back in the water again. The dinghy has flipped over and has been shoved further away from you… oh, and did I mention you’re even further from shore then when you first got in the damn dinghy? You have barely enough energy to keep your legs moving, so you don’t begin sinking, and now you have to use your strength to flip the damn dinghy back over! This is one way someone can experience life experiences becoming too much and desperately needing some assistance. 

Compare the above situation to the image below.

This is how you felt when you made it into the dinghy… but now what? If end up back in the water you have to do it all over again. So the question is… how long do you tread water before making another attempt to get into the dinghy? Or do you just quit? What ultimately makes the decision for you?

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Example 2: The hoarding pile. Imagine that this is your room and you only have the little stool to sit on and relax. Now picture this as your mind during an anxiety attack. How do you clear out all the clutter, calmly and without feeling more overwhelmed as you try to organize your thoughts?

The next image is a little different. It is more organized… but again, think of this as how you compartmentalize your thoughts. 

Imagine that you are in a small room by yourself and there are stacks of papers around you. Thankfully they are put into rather organized piles. One is labelled “family”. Another is “job”. Then there are “finances”, “friends”, and “relationship”. You have things categorized and neatly labelled so even though you may have stacks of these papers all around you with very little room to move, you have an idea of where everything is located. So if one pile (one area of you life) needs to be examined or need to answer a question, you have an idea of where to look. So yes, there is stress knowing that these piles at times can feel like they are crushing your space and offering you little room to breathe, you still feel like you have a sense of control. But then some a**hole decides to enter your little space and turn on a big ass fan and blow all your piles of papers all over the damn place! So now your entire system is messed up and the very little space you had just for you, to stand or sit without the papers quite literally crushing you, well that’s all changed. This is what anxiety can feel like when become overwhelmed with all areas of your life. If the papers would just stay in their spots, and hopefully not have more papers added daily, then there is this belief that things are under control and you can still function well enough to make it through your daily activities. But as soon as the papers become scattered, all bets are off! Now you have to take a huge ass breath and start organizing each paper one by one. What’s more, whatever papers you thought were buried and either not important to look at, or could ignore for a later date, all of sudden have caught your attention and need to be looked at immediately. And because the entire room has just become a disaster zone of random papers, each new paper you look at can cause upset. You start going through memories and past debts that are owed. Your poor brain cannot focus on just one area or one problem because it’s like they are all demanding your attention! So you stop for a second and try to catch your breath, deciding to ignore the emotions and sick feelings that come up with each new page seen. You make the decision to just rebuild the piles and organize things back into their categories. You tell yourself just to power through, to get organized and then, and only then, will you start to pick away at whatever problem really needs to be looked at and tackled. 

Of course, the other decision is always to just walk out of the room and shut the door behind you. But what would that really do? You still have all the papers floating around and no problem or issue can be dealt with unless you dig it up and try to understand all the pieces as one big picture. Anyway, point is even if you walk out of the room and shut the door you are not only shutting the door on figuring out how to handle any problems, but you are also ignoring the possibility of calming your anxious mind because it desperately wants to be organized and feeling like there is some control over things again. So what do you do?

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Example 3: Life as a boxing match.

Oh, and did I mention you’re the one getting your ass kicked here? What if it’s work anxiety? 

I am comparing anxieties to literally feeling like you are stuck in a boxing match and you are just being pummeled over and over again. The crowd keeps cheering you on so you keep getting back up to fight. The crowd may not be yelling for you to get up again just for their entertainment. They may genuinely think they are being helpful by screaming at you to keep fighting. However, there is one person in the crowd out in the nose-bleed section. This person, a friend, a fan, hell it could even be your Higher Self, and this person is trying to yell over the rest of crowd. This person is worried about your overall health, not just this match. This person is encouraging you to lay down, (take a knee if you will, in football terms). To just play possum! Accept the loss, accept the defeat (at least in this moment). Crawl back to your corner and let the referee call the match. Go home and heal. Then make a decision about whether or not you should jump back into the ring. I am not saying to completely give up on your goals here, I am simply saying it is probably better to use what brain cells you still have and go back to your corner before you’re put unconscious because you don’t want to “look like”… and fill in the blanks here! Whether it’s because you don’t want to look like a “loser”, “chicken”, “failure”, “a fake”, “a quitter”… these are just mean terms your brain uses during an anxiety attack to try and force you to behave the way IT wants. Listen to that one caring voice in the crowd. Let that one voice become louder and stronger until it becomes your own voice encouraging you to step back, take a break, and wait to look at the situation when you are not being smacked repeatedly in the head! Just an idea…

But what to do if this is how you are feeling during (or after) a really bad anxiety moment?

No one wants to feel like they’ve lost some battle, especially if it’s a promotion or some other aspect of your life you were really wanting to get. You have to ask yourself if at the end of the day is it better to stay in that state of repeated hitting and bruising, both to your ego and physical body… or, is it better to take a break and collect yourself in order to come back stronger and clear-headed? Some situations you do have to stand up and fight. Sometimes you aren’t given a choice. However, sometimes you do need a referee to step in and call the match in order to keep everyone safe. This is when anxiety is beyond settling on your own and needing to ask for help. Ultimately, what you do is up to you. I am simply putting out a third example as to how anxiety may feel when life situations become a bit more complicated. 

It wouldn’t feel good to lose the fight, the battle, the argument. But is it really “losing” if the other option was to keep fighting until you’re essentially brain damaged? Just some random thoughts to think about… again, you do you. 

Now time for some peace and quiet…

Doesn’t that feel better?? 🙂

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Coming back to original part of this post, what would it mean if you didn’t have the anxieties you have? How much head space would be opened up if weren’t constantly worrying about the different areas of your life? What if only one area was causing concern? Let’s take that a step further. What if you just knew (using a crystal ball or tarot, whatever floats your boat!) But intuitively KNEW that whatever was creating your anxiety and keeping you up at night, what if you knew without a shadow of a doubt that the issue/problem/concern/worry would magically be okay? If you KNEW things would all work out but didn’t have the details of how things would unfold. Would this make you calm and relaxed? Would you still worry about that situation/ dilemma? Would you put much thought into it? Would you even discuss it with people anymore? Additionally, if your head space was cleared up from these worries, what would you think about instead? How would you feel? Would you spend more time sleeping at night, playing with your kids or pets? Would you be able to concentrate better, maybe read a book or start a creative project? 

I believe anxiety comes in many forms and can be a super bitch to shut up when it gets really loud and demanding to be heard. But I find Anxiety itself is like a scared little child that just wants to know everything will be okay. The problem I really find (at least with today’s random thoughts), is how to get it to stop spinning and assure It that things really will be okay, without using that lovely crystal ball. There are many ways to “control” anxious thoughts and these I’m sure will be explored more in future posts, but it truly does make me wonder… if you didn’t have those anxious thoughts, what would you spend your time thinking about?

Take care of yourself and each other.

xx

Brandy Marie