My walk on the dark side continues. My head is hurting horribly and the pressure feels like my head is going to implode. It makes me feel this anxiety that just feels like I want to crawl out of my own skin. I feel like I can’t stand another second being stuck inside my own body and I want to scream. I know that all I need to do is take it one moment at a time and then one minute at a time and so on and it will pass, but it is a struggle.
The thing that is on my mind tonight as I go through this struggle is a video I saw recently. It was one of those self-help guru people saying to watch this video and it would change your life if you had anxiety. I watch it and ever since I did, every time I think about it, I just feel so frustrated and angry. Essentially she said that every time you have an anxiety attack, get moving and when you feel that heart racing from anxiety think about something good that excites you so that you can trick your body into thinking that is what all those physical symptoms are coming from. She said that she had suffered from anxiety and maybe she did, but that was the same junk I had heard a million times when I was in my twenties from so many people who never understood what it really was like to suffer from anxiety.
Everyone thinks that it is the fight or flight response, but they forget the idea of being caught like a deer in headlights. People suffering from anxiety sometimes just get so overwhelmed that they freeze up. It just happens. Every single person who has ever gotten scared has had it happen to them. The senses just get so totally overwhelmed and instead of running or fighting or whatever else, you just freeze up. It’s happened to me countless times. It is only from understanding the anxiety and facing it that I have been able to deal with it. I don’t want to trick my mind or my body into believing I am feeling something that I am not. I want to experience my life for everything that it is. I understand that my body’s nervous system is misfiring and I may not have a reason to be anxious, but that’s the signal my body is getting. Instead of trying to deny it that it is happening or convince myself to work around the symptoms, I choose all the time to face it head on. I accept the problem, I learn to live with it. It may not be the fast and easy solution, but at least I experience my life exactly as it is. And if it gets too much and too overwhelming, then I stop and breathe. I give it to God. I take it moment by moment. Then minute by minute. Until I can go on.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
