The Weight Of It All
Anxiety, self-care, and the pressure to do it “right”.
Anxiety has me.
I used to say “I have anxiety”, but let’s be honest, I don’t have it. It definitely has me.
I’ve never had trouble admitting or sharing with others about my anxiety, but I would consistently downplay it. And in a society where the word “anxiety” can be tied to the day before a job interview or the fear of dying, it’s hard to know what anxiety weighs for a person.
For me, it weighs a lot. Or at least it has recently. Anyone that struggles with mental health knows that it ebbs and flows depending on all sorts of factors. So in an effort to be transparent, here is what my anxiety looks like.
- Difficulty breathing steadily, focusing, or being productive.
- Consistent intrusive thoughts- mostly that people are mad at me or upset with me.
- No sleep. Just thoughts.
- Nail picking or chewing.
I completely understand that not everyone’s anxiety looks like this. This is just mine and while it may not seem like a lot, for me those 4 points above can control an entire week. And I would consistently make it worse. I habitually shove the anxiety down when I am around others. I downplay and make jokes and try to keep things light because I don’t want to upset others. I take on too much and never say “no” to commitments because I don’t want to let people down. I address situations where I think someone could be mad at me and make the situation worse because there was never a situation in the first place.
All of this ^^ because I have such a deep fear of people not liking me, approving of me, or being upset with me. And it would build and build like an overfilled trash can. I would keep throwing stuff away until trash was falling out and the trash company would refuse to pick it up. Then my only choice to empty was to let it all out at once- a panic attack. And after all that heightened emotion, I was left exhausted, with an empty trash can, that would just be filled again in another week or so. (Nothing says anxiety like comparing yourself to trash).
I am stuck.
Last week, I was browsing TikToks (ya know, as one does when they are trying to tune out the thinking) and I came across a video of a woman sitting at her kitchen table and all she says in the video is “It’s not your job to make people love you. You just have to love yourself”. I watched it probably 9–10 times and just sat in my car and sobbed. Partly because she is absolutely correct but also because I had never considered the second part of her statement. I was so focused on making her everyone else was happy with me that I never stopped to consider if I was happy with myself.
And I’m not. I’m so fucking not. In fact, I’m pissed off at myself. I have let anxiety control me for so long that I didn’t even think I could do anything about it. So after I calmed down, I decided, then and there in my car, that I was going to start having anxiety and letting it have me a little less.
I’ll never not have anxiety. It will likely be always something that I struggle with and have to address, but I think I can start to make it easier.
Self Care
We have all heard this social buzzed word probably thousands of times in our life. We usually hear it in conjunction with a woman taking a bubble bath with a face mask on and candles lit.
I want to stress- there is NOTHING wrong with that. If you enjoy that and it calms you down, then you should absolutely continue to love yourself in that way.
I want to propose the idea that there are different types of self-care (groundbreaking, I know, just hang on). Or, for the purpose of this little journey that I have decided to take you on, “self-care pills”.
So as I decided that I needed to take action against my anxiety, it didn’t take me long to get to the idea of self-care. But I almost immediately got down on myself because I HAVE tried self-care, and while it’s nice for like an hour, it didn’t help me calm down long-term. And after I drained the bath and blew out the candles, I just went right back to being anxious. I needed something to make this better long-term. And I thought, “I wish ibuprofen made anxiety go away”.
And then it hit me.
Anxiety is a sickness. Just like when you have the flu, your body is sick and needs to be taken care of, when you have anxiety, your soul and mind are sick and you need to take care of them. (I wanna say that I know that “sick” might be an aggressive word, but I am trying to give this the weight it deserves). So just like I take Nyquil, drink plenty of water, take a day off work, get extra sleep and drink hot tea when I have the flu, I need to do whatever the equivalent is to that is for my brain and soul when I have anxiety.
I know there is medication for anxiety. I will talk about that in a later post, for now, just roll with the analogy.
Then everything clicked. I know why my version of “self-care” hadn’t been working for me in the past. It’s because it wasn’t the right medicine for that sickness. My old go-to version of self-care was to “treat myself”. But here's the thing, I was anxious every day, and I would treat myself every day, and it never helped and it just became a cycle of feeling worse and worse and having the “treats” not help.
So basically, I had a broken ankle and I was taking Benedryl to help it. While Benedryl is a valid medicine, it’s not going to help your ankle pain or swelling. It will only make you tired, and then you will wake up and still be in pain.
At this point, you’re probably like “yeah…we all knew this”, but coming to this conclusion rocked my world. I was putting my effort in all the wrong places and then getting upset when it wasn’t helping. I was shopping, treating myself to ice cream and new shoes, and using face masks and all of that, and then sitting there in my shame when none of it helped.
So I am thinking that I want to figure out what self-care means to me. No, I NEED to figure out what self-care means to me. I need to start taking the right medicine for my illness.
So, I am posting this to keep myself accountable. I am making this public so that I have no choice but to continue working towards a solution- something that works.
I want to have anxiety. I want to stop letting it have me. So I am setting out to try as many new self-care activities as I can this summer. I am going to have a self-care summer if you will. My hot girl summer will be a calm, collected, and centered summer.
So follow me throw this. Please keep me accountable, ask me how I am doing and what I tried this week, and ask me if I did it on a weekday (because we can’t just self-care and relax on the weekends, my dudes, we can’t). Try them too, give me ideas, or offer a little “You got this” here and there (I love words of affirmation- being told I’m doing a good job is like the best thing for me).
Something. Has. To. Change.
