Nothing to Fear

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I find myself wondering about my anxiety a lot. It seems like it never leaves me. But at the same time, aren’t I always looking for it? Checking around my inner corners even in calm moments, hoping not to find it lurking there. Sometimes I wonder if me and my anxiety have become somewhat codependent. Who would I even be without this constant nervous, fearful energy inside? It feels like a core part of my existence. To be alive is to be anxious. At least that’s what it feels like for me.

Anxiety has started to feel like just another part of my rigid routine. Wake up, make coffee, start worrying about everything and nothing at the same time. I’m so used to feeling this way that often it helps to just try to pinpoint exactly what I’m anxious about. Normally it’s nothing specific, just a vague cloud shaped ball of static inside me, flashing at intervals that seem to spell out in morse code: DANGER. But when I search my heart and mind for the monsters and find none are really there, for a moment that cloud dissipates.

It’s exhausting and time consuming to keep going through that check list in my head though. That list of what I’m worried about and why it’s actually okay. It’s almost like OCD actually. I feel like I need to keep checking that I’m not forgetting anything, that my life is in order, before I can relax for even a moment. It’s starting to feel more and more like the reason I’m anxious a lot of the time is simply because I was anxious at this time yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. My brain no longer searches for something to trigger anxiety, it just has itself set that way by default.

It always comes back down to trust. Can I trust myself? That I’m doing everything I need to do? Can I trust the universe when some things are out of my hands? I’m wary of that trust. I’m always afraid that if I allow myself to just trust, I will have been foolish to do so. I’m worried that when things fall apart again one day, I will blame myself. I’ll say if only I had paid more attention. If only I hadn’t let myself relax, and trust that I was doing enough.

I guess that’s just an excuse though. I’ll always find a way to blame myself when things go wrong. I think in some ways it helps to blame ourselves. It gives us the illusion that we are in control, that we have complete power over every situation. But in the end we know that isn’t true. That’s why we need to be able to trust. So that we can find the strength, the courage to keep going despite that uncertainty, that lack of control.

Anxiety is a signal. It tells us that something is wrong. It promises to go away once we are safe again, once we fix whatever problem there is. The issue is that anxiety never tells us what the problem actually is. In nature, it would be obvious, whatever is threatening your very life at that moment. But in modern society, it is much harder to tell where the danger is. If it’s even there at all. It makes me feel like a wild animal. On edge, looking around wildly, searching for the threat, searching for a way to escape. There is nothing more difficult that overriding your bodies natural impulses. But that’s what I’m asking myself to do every day. I have to keep telling this frightened animal inside not to run, when everything it knows is pleading, begging it to run. It’s a constant wrestling match between my body’s wisdom and the thinking mind. It’s no wonder I am always so tired. Sometimes it seems like all I can do is keep telling myself: It’s okay to feel anxious.

It’s okay to feel anxious.

It’s okay to feel anxious.

It’s okay to feel anxious…

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