What Is This Feeling?

For about the past year or so my life has been consumed by my anxiety. I'm not just talking about how I often felt anxious and experienced panic attacks, but even when I was calm I still had anxiety on the brain. My thoughts often included things like: Will this situation make me anxious? How can I prepare for possible anxiety? What's triggering this anxious reaction? What can I do during a panic attack to minimize it? What can I do daily to help keep my anxiety low? What's my exit plan? Can I handle this certain situation right now? Do I have my Xanax in case all my preparations fail?

I could go on and on with the types of thoughts I often had and still have but we would be here forever. The main takeaway is that all I was thinking about was my anxiety. I think these thoughts were extremely important for me to have at the time, and to still have from time to time, because they have helped me to better understand myself, my anxiety, and how to live with it. With that being said, now that I am feeling more on the positive side of things I've realized that thinking about anxiety all the time is keeping me from enjoying the moment. My therapist helped me really understand this by explaining that since I've been so focused on anxiety for so long it's the feeling that my brain jumps to. This is so true for me. If my heart starts racing whether I'm watching a really exciting hockey game, working out, or actually anxious my body automatically reacts like I'm starting the spiral into panic mode. I often find myself repeating over and over again it is normal for your heart rate to increase when you are working out, or whatever the situation may be, to try and help calm myself down. I even have to ask my parents at times "this is a normal body reaction to this situation right?" because my brain can't always make the distinction between normal and anxiety or panic. I've temporary lost my ability to categorize regular body reactions in situations into different feelings. Even now during this positive streak I have going I spend a good amount of my time waiting for it to end. I don't really know what to do with myself if I'm not feeling anxious because I've become unaccustomed to all the different emotions we can feel on a daily basis.

Instead of worrying about when I'll stop feeling happy and start feeling anxious or depressed again I need to switch my thinking to understanding that I will feel anxious again at some point because that's what anxiety is. However when that time comes I have the necessary tools to help me get through the moment and survive it aka I can dance through my anxiety (hello inspiration for the title of my blog). This is 100% easier to write then it is for me to do, honestly at times I feel this is nearly impossible. I feel that now that I've opened my brain to understanding why I often feel worry and anxiety I can't shut it off, but I need to instead try to learn how to  find the same understanding for all emotions. What really makes me happy or angry or excited or frustrated? At this moment in time I often find I honestly don't know the answer to these questions but I can definitely tell you what my anxiety and panic attack triggers are. This is where my focus is right now, learning to live in the moment and reacquaint myself with the many emotions we can experience. When I'm happy I want to be happy and when I need to be angry or sad I want to let myself feel that too, but I don't want to spend my time during one emotion waiting to feel something else.

If any of you out there have any tips or tricks on how to live more in the moment and let yourself feel whatever emotion arises I would love to hear them!

Until next time 💜