I didn’t know what Anxiety really was until I had panic attacks. One of my friends who had panic attacks came to me and said that I had a panic attack. I said, ‘What?’. I still didn’t know what that was about until she took me to this counsellor and I learnt more about Anxiety.
If you ask me how Anxiety affected me, I would say that Anxiety had many effects on my life. Here are just some of the things that Anxiety did:
- Anxiety made me think about the ‘worse case scenarios’. For example, Anxiety told me that ‘if I’m in front of lots of people, I probably will trip over.’
- sometimes Anxiety made me blush.
- sometimes I got panic attacks about the possibilities of getting panic attacks.
- sometimes Anxiety made me feel this shyness about meeting people and speak in a quiet voice.
Looking back, there were things going on in my life with my friends and family when Anxiety took a grip of my life. My dad died. He had a heart attack. That kind of made me a bit anxious ‘cos it only went on for around two hours. My friend committed suicide back then too. The influence of Anxiety on my life was about 90% then!!! I think it is now down to about 60%. I used to get Anxiety a couple of times per week. Now it affects me probably twice per year.
I realised that the main tactic Anxiety used was negative voices. For me, one of the negative voices kept telling me that ‘I’m not the best that I can possibly be’ and that ‘I’m not trying my best’.
One of the main things that has helped me was combating the negative voices. I remember saying to myself that ‘I can just be the best that I can RIGHT NOW’. So instead of keeping trying, I just do what I could. Replacing ‘should’ with ‘could’ also helped. Sometimes there is no timeline. If I want to do something later, I could and I have that option. I also like to attack the negative voices with my ‘Ninja’. You know, Ninja and Kung Fu are things that I eventually want to do. I would think of these martial art movies and know that my ‘Ninja’ will combat the voices.
These actions of countering the tactic of Anxiety opened up things in my life. For example, I’m now a bit more social and go to groups that I like. I go to Art classes and did some paintings. I also go to music classes. Another interesting development is that I was also encouraged to sing along when I’m playing the piano!
1 comment:
This reflection on dealing with anxiety shows that from the very start, your attitude to a situation is going to play a large role on the out come. "Should" instead of "Could"
stand out as proactive thinking to dealing with anxiety. The use of the internal ninja also takes on a creative and empowering method.
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