Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
I was feeling little bursts of anxiety today, nothing too bad, but this was on top of having an upset stomach for the past two days ( which I haven't had since my brain bleed or mild stroke, also discovered my chronic kidney disease stage 3 and high blood pressure). So, I immediately jumped to something being wrong. I hate the bursts because it feels like it comes from nowhere. I had indigestion all-day and it made my mind wander, "am I getting worse all of a sudden?" So, of course, I "googled" (which I know I shouldn't do) and came across every bad thing I could. But, I didn't feel more stressed out. Just the same.
I was full of anxiety last week and a little this week, because my doctor called and wants me to set up an appointment to get blood drawn and see how I'm doing since I lost the forty pounds, meds, changed my eating habits, and exercise now, because I haven't been there in close to a year (because of Covid and needing a break after the hospital stay and constant visits). Every time, I think of going to the doctor's I immediately think "what's wrong now", "you changed your life for nothing", "you're going to need a transplant kidney." It sucks because I used to never go to the doctor and that's why I didn't know that I had high blood pressure and going to the doctor probably would've helped me get healthier years ago. I need to stop discounting the progress I made and not fall into old habitual ways of thinking.
After having a great summer, walking around every day, getting outside (scared of Covid too lol), it's hard to do that in the fall and winter, I realized. My walks became more and more seldom as the weather got colder and I think wearing a mask, even though it messes up my breathing (on walks) in the colder months (I'm in the Northeast). But, I still wear one for the people around me. But, I'm also going to try to start working out at home on days I don't want to go outside.
Then, like something "clicked" in my head... "is beating anxiety just never feeling anxious, or being able to deal with the feelings and not spiraling?" It's probably about learning to deal with the feelings that you feel and not jumping to every worst-case scenario when you feel them. Not just expecting them to magically go away.
Am I stupid for thinking what I thought in the last paragraph or do others feel like that's the basic goal for them also? Should I always expect these feelings and just worry about how I react to them?
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I haven't written in my diary on my computer since May because I thought that my computer was dying. I got away from writing but my computer is hanging in there. I think that I will start writing in it again. It's so therapeutic.
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Years ago, I won a mirrored armoire from my job. It's in my bedroom but I rarely stand in front of it. Yesterday, I had to have a dexascan done so I had to change into a gown. There was a full length mirror in the changing room. I'm aware that I gained 5 to 7 pounds over the last year from cheating on Keto but I didn't know what it looked like. It was a reality check.
I still stand by the theory that anxiety is an all-natural, hard-wired part of our survival instinct. Don't cure it. Train it.
Alas, we live in a world that over-trains that natural instinct. How to curb it is the harder challenge these days.
! ! !Well mask it all! ! !
Then there are the moments when active anxiety rises, and I'm right there with the breathing, and it quiets down to a dull roar and drumming calm.
Here's to finding the balance that works in the moment you are in.
I totally agree. Every one feels anxious from time to time. It’s natural and normal. So beating something we are kind of wired to experience seems not only contrary to our biology and physiology, but impossible. When anxiety becomes a default position where we are hyper vigilant and on high alert all the time, draining our mental and physical energy as a result, that to me is where the management comes in.
I recently experienced something similar. I have a chronic disease that has generally been under control with medication for years and was feeling sick. Anytime I feel unwell, my mind can start going down a path of no return, that the medications have stopped working, remission is over and I’m going get really sick and then what if I stay sick and what if I need surgery... the whole nine yards of spiraling thoughts when really, I simply just don’t feel well. So a couple of months ago I was feeling pretty rough, enough to call my called my doc, and so I had to have some tests done and then after that some more tests and I tried, REALLY TRIED, to not indulge the warped thoughts that started going through my head. I still had some anxiety of course, but it ended up not level 10 anxiety because I immediately got in front of it, managing it, by still exercising, still throwing myself into work, redirecting my thoughts, not googling crap, breathing, meditating, etc. Doing so really de-escalated my anxiety to where it felt less like sustained catastrophic thinking and more like run of the mill concern that most everyone experiences when something doesn’t feel right and you have to eliminate serious causes. That was it my cases, tests to rule out stuff and within a few weeks I was feeling better. No known reason for why I felt lousy, just either a bug I couldn’t shake or one of those deals when you have an autoimmune disease, your body just goes a little hay wire from time to time and it ends up not being a big deal.
Personally, I believe a lot of the anxiety I experience is more habit or compulsion related than any thing else. Sure my brain has probably rewired itself over the years because of sustained hyper vigilance but if I’m honest with myself I think sometimes when I’m handling something and don’t feel anxious about it, I tell myself, hey hold on, aren’t you supposed to be fretting and freaking out? And just like that, I opened the door for anxiety to take over. So my goal is to sort break what I feel are anxious inducing habits, like questioning myself why I’m not freaking out, like hyper vigilance, like looking stuff up on the internet, like catastrophic thinking. I try to look at it like the management of my thoughts and behavior is just like managing a health condition.
Anyway thanks for posting this and sorry for babbling, haha! It’s just very relatable to me.