FundaMENTALs

I’ve already touched on this a few times, but I wanted to come back to it. Mental health, specifically anxiety, is such a mental thing. There are so many mental mind games being played on you 24/7 that you can’t really focus on what it is you’re actually feeling. You may also not understand that your mind is playing tricks on you. Thinking back to the times in high school when I was anxious or felt out of sorts, I remember feeling the effects of my anxiety that I now know are anxiety. But before, I had no idea. I just went about my day ignoring it and hoping it went away. In one way, I’m glad I was able to push it away and not deal with it. Dealing with it opens a whole other can of worms that can be really confusing and at that time, I wasn’t ready to go down that path.

As many of you know, it wasn’t until last year that I actually had to face what was going on with my body and my anxiety and come up with some sort of solution. Stating it how it is, the biggest thing that helped me get through it, and past it, was acknowledging what was happening, what I was feeling, and why. This isn’t something I could have done without the help of my therapist and it definitely wasn’t easy. I found that literally just stating exactly how your body feels, even if it sounds really stupid, really helps. It’s like keeping something bottled up and you aren’t sure whether to say something about it or not. But when you finally do, the lid comes off of the bottle and the feeling goes away. I can’t speak for everyone, but this is how I felt. And no, it didn’t get rid of the feeling I had at the moment entirely, but it released so much hesitation and the overall feeling of being tense.

I think part of what is hard about being honest about how you feel is that we are naturally scared of judgement and others not understanding us. When I finally started to open up and talk about the things I was feeling, I didn’t feel scared anymore. I felt urgency to speak more about what I was feeling. I thought if I could tell someone how I was feeling every time I got anxious it would help. And it did! I told my mom every feeling I had, along with my therapist when I saw her once a week. I would make a note to myself when I felt one way and what triggered it. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of but eventually I found myself figuring out why I was having these feelings, and what feelings brought on other feelings.

For examples, the other day I started overthinking something I had said. The more I started overthinking, the more bloated I got. This is a common symptom of anxiety and in the moment, was the symptom that made itself present in my body and my mind. I immediately got anxious as to why I was feeling that way, but from practice, I knew it was my body having a response to something that I was fixating on. I ended up confiding in someone I trusted and was comfortable with about what I had been feeling and why. Explaining that it was making me anxious and that I needed to express what I was thinking and feeling helped diminish that bloating and tense sensation.

I truly think once you begin to find your triggers, it becomes easier and easier to pinpoint why you feel the way you do and what can help it. Even now, I continue to get pretty serious anticipation anxiety. I have a feeling it’s something I’m going to be dealing with for awhile and I’ve learned how to talk to myself in these situations. 6 months ago I didn’t know why my jaw or body was shaking all day until that one thing was done or that one moment had passed. And not knowing made the anxiety worse. I know now that if there’s something I’m either looking forward to, am excited about, am nervous about, or am anticipating, I will most likely have anticipation anxiety that day leading up to whatever it is; and I am now able to tell myself and others right away that that is what I am feeling and I know it will pass. I just have to face it and get through it. Of course there are things that help, but sometimes that’s not enough and being able to calm yourself down is your best option.

Again, this is no easy task. Learning to understand ourselves is a huge fundamental key in my opinion, and it’s difficult. However, you WILL get through whatever you are feeling and you will be okay. Everything happens for a reason.