Quote:
Originally Posted by Leah123
And I guess that's why I'm upset. I'm not just snapping out of it. Am I just wallowing, I don't know. Can't I just try harder to ignore it and throw myself into other things. Or should I sit and accept the feeling. I can manage that with most feelings, sit and let them be, but the anxiety... it's a killer. I can't sit with the feeling of not being able to breathe, of shaking. I'm trying. I don't know if I'm making it worse by mentioning it, or if I should just ignore it. Sometimes, when it's this bad, I just want someone near by to... talk me through it? I don't know... help me calm down. But I'm really alone, there's no one like that right now.
It's such a war to decide whether to push her to get it and help me more or to be upset and retreat for a while or what. It's alright... anxiety won't kill me! I don't know why I'm writing this: maybe some anti-anxiety guru will have magic words for me. HA. I need the right mantra and I don't know it. I get stuck feeling anxious and sometimes it's hard to get unstuck. (And I'm on deadline! I have three things I should be doing right this minute, and none of them is writing this, ha.)
Why am I even anxious, I hardly know anymore. I should maybe be telling myself things are alright. It just gets so hard to concentrate.
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There's a different kind of acceptance. Giving up, letting it be whatever it is. No, don't just "sit" with the not breathing but don't fight it either? it just is and does not require anything from you, does not really care about you so you have to not "care" about it, not "sit with" it like that will make
it feel better
Sometimes I like to use my imagination in odd ways, turn things on their head. Ask things like, "What can I make this damn anxiety do for me?" Anytime I hear myself say something like, "I have three things I
should be doing. . ." I get thankful that something else has stepped in front of me like a bus and stopped me so I can hear myself shoulding myself like that. Who says you should be doing whatever? I always should have been doing my homework but never did and spent 20+ years before I "got it" that it was not
my homework but the homework given me by someone else without my consent but with my "acceptance".
What would happen if you decided to be grateful for the anxiety and the struggle to understand and work with it? Make it not about the anxiety but for and about you? Accept the anxiety in the sense that it could help you instead of in the sense of putting up with how it makes you feel? When I use to get so I could not breathe well I would stop and as I was breathing, remind myself that I was breathing. My knees often hurt from my arthritis but I'm walking anyway, I'm climbing those stairs anyway. I may not always be able to but right this moment I can. What do you want to do? Think on that rather than what you "should" do?