Sitting with my anxiety instead of dealing with it is a foreign concept in my ears until I realized that I spend roughly 6-8 hours every day ruminating about countless issues in my life.
A friend of mine said, "you always seem to have something going on everyday," and I agreed.
I feel like there is something to be worried about every day, and when I don't worry, things will go south. So I spend every day worrying about various things and researching data to reassure myself.
The themes can change depending on what I cared most about: My academic life, my social life, my family, my physical and mental health, my hobbies, my pets, morals, and many more. However, the level of anxiety is still the same: I feel the urge to feel 100% certain about those things, or else I will feel miserable and suffer from the consequences.
I find reassurances for my anxiety by researching the internet, asking other people's perspectives, reading books, finding YouTube videos, and avoidance (avoiding things that might trigger my anxiety). These things might sound helpful, right? After all, anxiety can be lessened once you take action.
Except that's not always the case.
For some people, their anxiety is related to certain issues that will be lessened if the issue is gone. However for many people including me, my anxiety is always present no matter what issue I have. Even if I resolve one issue, there will be more issues arising out of nowhere. Things that don't appear to be significant somehow manage to arise as a powerful final boss in my mind.
How does this look in real life? Well, you will see me as someone who keeps having problems every time you ask me about my day. You will be asked about many questions from me that you might not be able to answer. You will see me performing weird habits and avoiding certain things just to feel less anxious. You will see me be addicted to random things to avoid confronting my never-ending anxiety.
I didn't realize this until my close friend told me that I should stop asking him for reassurances as it also makes him stressed out and overwhelmed, and I complied. I thought dealing with my own anxiety would be very hard, because I would always lean in towards external reassurances to feel better. However, it did not. Actually, my anxiety got better after I stopped asking for reassurances.
I noticed that when I sit with my anxiety and let myself sit with the discomfort, it will eventually go away.
Turns out, I am just very intolerant with uncertainty. Uncertainty scares me.
Every time I feel uncertain, my brain makes up the worst-case scenarios and tell me to perform many habits to easen my anxiety.
At first, I was intolerant towards uncertainty about a big issue, but gradually, I become intolerant towards any kind of anxiety. If I feel like there is something wrong with my drink, then I won't drink it at all. If I feel uneasy about my hobbies, then I will stop doing them. If I feel uneasy about someone, I will stop talking to them.
I become addicted to the absence of anxiety that I let anxiety live my life.
"What do you want to do after college?" I don’t know, everything scares me so I won’t make any concrete choices. I will try to learn everything so I can accept any job.
"What are you learning right now?" I don't know, every hobby scares me because what if I find out I'm not good at it and realize that I just wasted my time working on something other people are better at?
"So you're a writer, what do you like to write?" I don't know, I'm scared of picking a niche topic and realizing that nobody likes what I write. I don't want to waste my time writing things people don't enjoy.
"Do you stay inside your house all day? Why don't you go outside?" I'm scared if I go outside I will be exposed to every anxiety and intrusive thoughts out there, and I will feel even more unsafe. It's better to handle it here at home.
"Why don't you just... not worry about these things?" Because what if they contain hidden truths and I end up getting hurt because of my lack of anxiety?
Do you see a pattern with the way I think? I see everything as a life-threatening issue; everything physically and mentally feels so real even though I have never experienced the consequences before.
These anxieties are rational, but my reaction towards them are irrational. They are debilitating, they hinder my every day life to the point I cannot work properly.
So how do I combat them?
1) By doing things that my anxiety is against.
Oh, I cannot walk outside because I'm afraid I will get hit by a swarm of intrusive thoughts? Sure, let's try it first though. (Some thoughts do hit, but it is not as bad as I'd imagined.)
My brain says I cannot think positively because I'm afraid I will screw something up? Fuck it, I'm still going to think positively because I want to live my life without constant anxiety every day.
2) And also by accepting that some things are uncertain by nature; you just gotta live until the future hits you.
My brain thinks I will die if I don't take a profitable hobby? Maybe that will happen, maybe not. I'm just gonna take a hobby I'm very passionate about and see how it goes.
My brain thinks I deserve to die because I'm not living up to my parents' expectations? Maybe, maybe not. I'm just gonna live my life because this is all I got so far.
Maybe, maybe not.
Uncertainty is inescapable, we just need to let it sit with us so our brain will no longer think it's a threat.
If you feel like you keep dealing with different anxieties every day, please leaen how to sit with those thoughts and let them go gently.
Bad things can happen, but so do good things. Don't let the possibility of bad things happening sabotage good things in your life.
(I still deal with this every day.)
