My Anxiety and How I Fight it

I have a lot of trouble turning my brain off.  There are always thoughts in my head about what needs to be done, what bad things could go wrong, and sometimes how afraid I should be.  It’s happening right now.

When it gets particularly bad I tend to isolate myself from other people and look for distractions.  It’s usually easier to fill my brain to overflowing than to calmly address and release these thoughts.  I guess you could say I have an undiagnosed anxiety problem.  

The good news is that I’ve found ways to fight it.

1. Reading

The ability to turn off the world around me and enter a different life with different adventures will always be medicinal to me.  Having to create the mental images of the world I’m entering, the characters, accents, and predicting what will happen next is a great way to swap my current world for one of my choosing.


2. Avoiding Caffeine (When unnessecary) 

I drank a Monster this morning when I definitely didn’t need it.  I supercharged my own brain into being more anxious.  Funny how that works.

3. Writing

This wasn't on the initial list but as I typed this blog I realized how much it helps.  Emptying my thoughts into a computer screen has been very cathartic.


4. Meditation

I recently found an app called Buddhify for my droid (Buddhify 2 for iOS).  It is incredible.  It’s meditation on the go for anyone from the noob to a seasoned meditation guru.  I cannot recommend this app enough for anyone struggling with anxiety or if you're in need of some peace and quiet to recharge your batteries.

Jobs

I’m currently working for a carpentry and construction company. Before this I sold shoes.  I majored in Theology and have played poker on a professional level. I am a living testament to the fact that no matter where you are now you have no clue where you might end up.

I put too much pressure on myself to find my “dream job” or more realistically “dream line of work”. I’m in a place where what I want to end up doing or working towards is in constant flux.  

I was told I could be anything when I grew up.  When I was 3 I wanted to be a shark.  Sharks, as far as my toddler brain was concerned, qualified under the “anything” category.  When I was told that I couldn’t be a shark I was devastated.  I then decided if shark was crossed off the list, the next best thing would be a T-Rex.  I just wanted to be big and awesome and eat smaller things than me.  I even asked my parents to change my name to “Rex” to be the first step in my dino conversion.  It didn’t fly.

I'd watch this

When I was a freshman in high school all i wanted to do was listen to Linkin Park, Eat Taco Bell until i passed out, and play World of Warcraft I was slightly unmotivated.  Every adult always made it a point to ask me what I would love to do, but I knew my answer of pure lethargy and Taco Bell wouldn't reflect well on my parents.

After a lot of personal reflection my qualifications and expectations of an ideal career choice seemed even more unrealistic than me transforming my DNA into a T-Rex.  That’s okay though.  Not all is lost.  I’ve botched a few interviews for jobs I thought were a great fit for me. It’s odd having a calmness and peace about something that is on my mind multiple times a day that used to cripple my ability to be joyful.

As many days as I wake up early in the morning dreading working outside in the cold I need to choose to let the thoughts of hope and gratefulness win over the thoughts of complaint and the desire to sleep in.  All I can do is work hard, focus my mind on the right thoughts, and be thankful for all the things and opportunities I have now and will have in the future.  As stressful as figuring my life out has been the past year, the adventure has been much more rewarding than any sense of purpose or job can fulfill.

That last sentence sounds cliche but the greatness of it is in its truth.  Our goals and dreams are so oriented around discomfort, adventure, and conquering the world that when things go wrong or off the main path we bemoan our luck, crawl into bed at the end of the day and think about what decisions we could have made better in order to have avoided this difficulty. 

Our success lies in the crux of not letting the challenge defeat our hopefulness and resolve.  

If the things we wanted in life were easy to attain then we would have them already, and be unsatisfied with how simple it all was. We would want so much more. We would dream of a world of challenge.

 

The Thing

I don’t know why blogging intimidates me.  But it does.  I’ve been trying to convince myself to do this for a few years.

Here goes.

Some guy jumping to his doom

The reason I want to do this is so I can empty my mind through writing.  It’s for me.  It’s so I can let my friends, family, and complete strangers see what I think, feel, love, and can’t wrap my head around.  I suppose on some level it’s to strengthen my relationships through me putting words on a website.  The next installment will probably be in a few days.

Thanks for reading.