A struggle in overcoming anxiety

So today i made a breakthrough that really shows to me how you cant treat every disturbance (problem just doesnt /vibe/ right) the same. Today we're talking about relaxing into your body. That sounds nice doesnt it? Well i can't remember the last time i could put 'my body' and the word 'relaxing' in the same basket. See, somewhere along the line when i started ignoring my emotional needs, I also started ignoring my body who was warning me about ignoring my emotional needs. The more I 'pushed through' the more my body acted up. First I felt uncomfortable in social situations, and my muscles tensed up, I pushed through. I started experiencing anxiety in social emotioans, my hands got clammy and there was a pit in my stomach . I pushed through. As the social anxiety became more severe I started sweating cold sweat that smelled so bad no deodorant could cover it. I developed IBS which meant that my stomach was constantly cramping and bloated. Safe to say 'feeling my body' does not feel good for me. Any form of yoga makes me anywhere from frustrated to angry, which supposedly means 'its working', except the angry feeling doesnt go away and that means im just pushing through because i dont know how to do anything else. Now im working through my issues mentally, by changing the story i tell myself and it is working amazingly. When i go through the cycle of event-thought-feeling anxious i am often able to trace back to what beljef i had that was triggered by a situation and reassure myself. I realise how important it is to listen to my body and i am envious of how people describe feeling any form of spirituality, meditation of yoga. But when i practices yoga, meditation or simply feel my body, my body immediately jumps into panic mode that i cant get out of. A very common advice for when you're experiencing 'anxious feelings' is to calm your mind by calming your body. In these moments your brain distorts reality ro fit your current beliefs - exactly those beliefs that create the anxious feelings, so thinking or rationalising yourself out of anzious feelings is very, very hard to do. However, your body will respond almost instantaneously when you provide the circumstance for it to do so: deepening your breath and ensuring that your exhale is longer than your inhale. Focusing on your body and relaxing each muscle one by one. So whenever i feel anxious and i dont know how to trace it back i try to feel my body, which leads to a deeper panic and generally just makes things worse. Today I realised that its okay that i have a bad relationship with my body right now. That its okay that when i feel anxious feelings i dont try to calm my mind by calming my body. I accept that that is not something that works for me right now ans that i need to take smaller steps in healing my relationship with my body before i can use such a strategy to calm myself down.

Alright lets dive a bit deeper into the start of learning something new with an all-or-nothing mentality. For me the practical example in this case is obviously blogging but ive experienced the same thing with other practices such as writing fiction and learning to okay basketball. It seemed as though there were two options. Nr 1. being that I am naturally good at this. This I experienced with creative writing. I wrote a few pieced that i found absolutely beautiful and any writing after became too uncomfortable, because i would only accept the same quality of writing. If its not at least that good, why try at all? And then i quit writing over time unless i felt _really_ inspired. Nr 2. Applied to basketball for me where i acknowledged that i wasnt particularly good, which is a lot easier to do with sports because of the well-known belief that it takes practiceto get better. However, as a response to this i started researching very intensively in order to find some program that could teach me how to execute each move perfectly. I was so focused on doing what others told me that i lost focus of what i was feeling myself. After a while i got frustrated with not getting better quickly enough that i also gave up. But here's the thing, i already know something about basketball, i know how to hold a ball, how to catch it, how to dribble and how to throw it into the hoop. Admittedly i wasnt particularly great at it, but i did know something. If i could acknowledge that and practice a little on my own to find out exactly how i do things, i could then research bit by bit to do small things better. This works better in two ways: you know how you do things, so its easier to compare them with how people tell you you can improve them. And secondly as a result of this you also are able to notice improvements a lot more naturally. The same thing holds for writing. Whereas with basketball i was holding on to the worst of my initial knowledge (i know nothing), with writing i was holding on to the best (the best piece of (writing). Instead i should just plat around for a bit and notice patterns in my writing, finding out which parts i found easier (e.g. Dialogue vs action scenes), which circumstances i found it easy to write in and which hard etc. Then from that basis i could start building forward and experimenting. I guess what im trying to say that for everything new you want to learn try to first find your basis and then start experimenting with the boundaries of that.

One of the beliefs I've been struggling with is that i feel like things need to be done 'a certain way'. I wanted to be a blogger and the only blogs i really know are popular self-help blog exactly the way you'd expect them to be: a nice x steps that you need to take, complete information with a catchy intro and enough irony to keep it light. The type of blog that turns your mental health into a nice comfortable checklist that has all the answers. See thats not what my mental health feels like and even when i learn something, thats still not what it feels like. So a big part of stopping me from blogging was feeling like doing it that way was too hard for me, i didnt have all the answers and if my post was never gonna be perfect, why post at all and really how could i ever be sure that i my information was exhaustive? It took sam laura brown, who does natural tangenty podcasts, to show me personal growth content doesnt have to be that way and i enjoyed that version that isnt that way much better. And of course i both like that better and feel a lot of resistance writing it in a different way, these go hand in hand. And even tho its great that she showed me it could be done this way, it would have been even more amazing if i could have just listened to my feelings and done it that way regardless. So yeah, i choose to believe that i have value to add to this world by doing things my way and only my way. If something feels off, that doesnt mean i should work harder, it means that just isnt my way and i should figure out what is my way. God, can life really be that easy?

Wow! Writing my previous post has taught me something! God i learn so much in a day its amazing. Anyways, ive been wanting to write a blog for so long but it was soo uncomfortable for me bc of my perfectionism and beliefs about writing a blog that i should know every nuance about everything that i write and have it 'all figured out' before i can tell other people what to do. And i knew that writing is the best way to learn how to get good at blogging and that i started this tumblr account with 0 followerz bc then there should've been no stress and i could learn to just write before writing anything 'official'. Good idea, but not good enough and my fears have prevented me from writing and then with this last post i realised something. What if instead of writing a blog to give advice i change my mindset to writing a blog about a real life struggle on how to overcome anxiety. Just sharing what im doing. No advice, no having shit figured out, no only reporting stuff that works. Kust whatever is happening and whatever im trying. I think that might work for me. Note that this blogging is not about actual blogging but about getting into a mindset that allows me to get better at blogging. Its about building the skills not the results. If i focus o. The results i turn perfectionist, focusing on the skills is a loophole and also better insurance for getting the results. But im not trying to think too much about that last part.

God, dealing with bad days is the absolute worst, but ive noticed there's some beliefs i might be able to work on. Its not necessarily the fear or pain that i dread the most but its the feeling of hopelessness. The fear that I'll never feel better again and the way my brain tells me that all my past work was obviously useless since im still experiencing pain. Everyone keeps telling you that the journey is not linear but the lows feel so low.. So! How can we take steps to improve this? First off, ive noticed thats its almost impossible to change beliefs while in that state of fear/panic/pain/hopelessness so if theres anything you can do externally that lessens those symptoms (for me moving out of my parents home was a _huge_ one) do that!! Yes its your thoughts about your circumstances that create your emotions, but sometimes you need a better environment to change those thoughts. So i now intellectually know that theres better days, or times i should say, and worse... Times. During the worse times im still fumbling on as you can read but during the better times i can work on some buffer to get me through the worst times. A belief that id like to add to my register is that bad times are a natural part of this journey (1) and that just because im feeling bad in the moment that doesnt mean im not making long term progress (2). And yes, you might intellectually know that, but thats only the first step! (ps a good way to tell whether you subconsciously believe something as well as intellectually is to see what 'evidence' your brain brings up: theres always plenty of evidence for both sides, so whichever your brain chooses to bring forth is the one it truly believes). What we want is for me to go through worse days and have my brain automatically reassure me that its just a phase and it will inevitably end. Note that thats regardless of whether we have 100% certainty about that! Thats the nice things about learning beliefs you get to pick the ones you think and there's never any 100% certainty about anything in life, so if your brain is using that as an excuse, please recognize that thats all it is, an excuse. Anyways. Im gonna go work on those by writing some sentences along those lines, figure out which ones 'feel right' and then repeating them over and over and over and over....

Hey did you know that, like, feeling bad is okay? In fact, discontinuing the feeling of shame over feeling bad is a great first step towards feeling somewhat better. Something that helped for me was to acknowledge that i was in fact, feeling bad. Even when I tried writing it down i kept wanting to write 'not good', but 'a bit bad and thats okay' can be a liberating experience

The easiest way to create more flow, is to deconstruct barriers

Every time you feel resistance is an oppertunity for growth. The solution is not to 'push through'. Listen to yourself. Find out why you feel resistance and work through it until the situation feels natural

Your self-help journey starts by accepting and loving yourself and your situation where you are RIGHT NOW

Alright back again! So I'm just gonna treat this the way I treat my notebook. Post stuff that are not meant to be read but are a vehicle for my personal growth. Letsgo

I wish I had a comfort zone

You should not be loved because of how your body looks. The way your body looks should be loved because its yours.

Anger is an emotion for which it is easier to be authentic, for it protects rather than exposes

Better to live in my own bubble than a universally shared one

Glorifying female beauty and objectification are two sides of the same coin. One side just shines a little prettier