Dealing with Anxiety

I spoke pretty openly last year about my struggles with anxiety and how it affects my daily life.

In the past year since writing that post, I think my anxiety has gotten a lot better.

Because our society encourages silence when it comes to mental health discussions, I think it's especially important to open up about tricks I use to combat these moments.


1. Keeping an "anxiety" journal.  I already write in a notebook almost daily, but it's usually about anything that is on my mind at that moment. I recently decided to start a journal specifically for my anxiety where I can talk about the thoughts I'm having, the way I'm feeling, etc. I think doing so is going to allow me to notice patterns with my thinking so that when I feel like I'm experiencing these feelings for the first time, I can open up to an old entry and see that these thoughts are in fact just the anxiety talking. I also think that I might be able to notice whether certain times of the day, week, and/or month cause me to feel more anxious.


2. Mindful activities. Cooking is a mindful activity, and it's one that I've gotten pretty into over the last 4 months. I find that when I'm cooking, I'm less focused on the emergencies that my anxiety tries to alert me to and more focused on making a delicious meal (and not cutting off my finger). Knitting is also something that I find helps me re-route my thoughts. Just a few hours ago, I was sitting in my room going out of my mind with racing thoughts when I decided to pick up a scarf that I've been working on since 2012 (no judgments). For twenty glorious minutes, I was pretty focused on just moving the yarn around the needle with almost no intruding thoughts.


3. Talking about it. I tend to let my anxiety build up until I feel like I want to sit in a corner and cry. After making my struggles public last year on my blog, I realized how unhealthy it is to keep to myself. My anxiety is like a really shitty friend who keeps a running tally of all the things that are wrong with me, and staying in the shadows with this "friend" can get pretty depressing. Creating a support system was a necessity for me. I don't always feel comfortable talking about my feelings with them, but I feel so much better after I do it. Their encouragement helps to pull me out of the shadows.



I will more than likely always have anxiety, but over the last year, I've started to see that it can be managed.  I've also started working on changing the narrative from "I am anxious" to "I have anxiety." This was a suggestion from my mom, and it has helped me see that anxiety is something I deal with, but it isn't who I am.