Gotta Get My Life Gayed Out

A lot of the time when people give advice intended to relieve anxiety, they suggest doing “relaxing” things like drawing, painting, knitting, taking a bubble bath, coloring in one of those zen coloring books, or watching glitter settle to the bottom of a jar.

This advice is always well-intentioned, and I’m not here to diss people who either give it or who benefit from it. But it has never, ever done shit for me, and this is because it goes about resolving anxiety in the completely wrong way.  

THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO when suffering from anxiety is to do a “relaxing” thing that just enables your mind to dwell and obsess more on the thing that’s bothering you. You need to ESCAPE from the dwelling and the obsession in order to experience relief.

You can drive to a quiet farm, drive to the beach, drive to a park, or anywhere else, but as someone who has tried it all many, many times, trust me–it’s a waste of gas. You will just end up still sad and stressed, only with sand on your butt. You can’t physically escape your sadness. Your sadness is inside of you. To escape, you need to give your brain something to play with for a while until you can approach the issue with a healthier frame of mind. 

People who have anxiety do not need more time to contemplate, because we will use it to contemplate how much we suck.

In fact, you could say that’s what anxiety is–hyper-contemplating. When we let our minds run free, they run straight into the thorn bushes. Our minds are already running, and they need to be controlled. They need to be given something to do, or they’ll destroy everything, just like an overactive husky dog ripping up all the furniture. 

Therefore, I present to you: 

THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN ANXIOUS

–Go on a walk

–Watch a sunset, watch fish in an aquarium, watch glitter, etc.

–Go anywhere where the main activity is sitting and watching

–Draw, color, do anything that occupies the hands and not the mind

–Do yoga, jog, go fishing, or anything that lets you mentally drift 

–Do literally ANYTHING that gives you great amounts of mental space to obsess and dwell on things.

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO WHEN ANXIOUS:

–Do a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or any other mind teaser game. Crosswords are the best.

–Write something. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. Write the Top 10 Best Restaurants in My City. Rank celebrities according to Best Smile. Write some dumb Legolas fanfiction and rip it up when you’re done. It’s not for publication, it’s a relief exercise that only you will see. 

–Read something, watch TV, or watch a movie–as long as it’s engrossing. Don’t watch anything which you can run as background noise (like, off the top of my head, Say Yes to The Dress.) As weird as it seems, American Horror Story actually helps me a lot, because it sucks me in. 

–Masturbate. Yes, I’m serious. Your mind has to concentrate on the mini-movie it’s running. It can’t run Sexy Titillating Things and All The Things That are Bothering Me at the same time. (…I hope. If it can, then…ignore this one.) 

–Do math problems—literally, google “algebra problems worksheet” and solve them. If you haven’t done math since 7th grade this will really help you. I don’t mean with math, I mean with the anxiety. 

–Play a game or a sport with someone that requires great mental concentration. Working with 5 people to get a ball over a net is a challenge which will require your brain to turn off the Sadness Channel. 

–Play a video game, as long as it’s not something like candy crush or Tetris that’s mindless. 

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO DURING PANIC ATTACKS ESPECIALLY:

–List the capitals of all the U.S. states

–List the capitals of all the European countries

–List all the shapes you can see. Or all the colors. 

–List all the blonde celebrities you can think of.

–Pull up a random block of text and count all the As in it, or Es or whatever.  

Now obviously, I am not a doctor. I am just an anxious person who has tried almost everything to help myself.  I’ve finally realized that the stuff people recommend never works because this is a disorder that thrives on free time and free mental space. When I do the stuff I listed above, I can breathe again. And I hope it helps someone here too. 

So some, going for a walk, drawing, and other “relaxing” activities are distracting, for others they are not!

Fight—Responds to abuse with anger and aggressiveness because that is the only thing that appears to give control in family dynamic. Responds to anything that resembles attack with cruelty and defensiveness and attempts to manipulate with intimidation and disdain before others can manipulate them.

Fawn—Responds to abuse by attempting to become the perfect victim in the hopes of being less hated and less mistreated in exchange for cooperating. Turns off all personal desires, boundaries, traits, and emotions, tries to become exactly what the abuser wants. Continues this set of interpersonal rules even with non-abusive outsiders.

but it doesn’t hold up as a social identity and that becomes extremely obvious whenever you hold it up to literally any other social identity. race, gender, class, ability, religion, sexuality, all of these are coherent identities that come with shared social, cultural, and political experiences. all of these are also things that children can be. all of them (except for race) can change over time of course, but children are still these things.

children can’t be asexual. point blank. to say there are asexual children is to say there are non-asexual children which is by definition sexualizing children, and extremely vile. this is also why ace =/= lgbt, bc children can be lgbt but they can’t be asexual.

im not even gonna get into all the ways the “asexual community” is non-cohesive bc it would take too long, but more importantly, the asexual/non-asexual dichotomy is false. made up. a lie. not grounded in any sort of reality.

i think conceptualizing “asexuality” as a social identity and presenting it as a go-to option if you’re even remotely uncomfortable or uninterested with sex is…. bad. it’s just bad! sex is COMPLICATED and personal and everything from your upbringing to religion to sexuality to race to gender to dysphoria to mental health etc is going to factor into your relationship to sex. minors are developing their sexualities. young adults are figuring out their rltshp to sex. grown ass adults are also still figuring it out! 

if you have spent time with yourself reflecting on your rltshp to sex and figuring out with makes you happy and healthy, and the conclusion you came to is asexuality, that’s COMPLETELY fine. good for you!

but that’s not an identity the same way that someone coming to the conclusion that they love sex and having sex all the time, is also not an identity. and it’s also a conclusion that only adults can come to. to send any other message just makes it harder for minors to safely figure out their own rltshps to sex and attraction.

you literally have people suggesting to 15 year olds that they might be ace bc they’re “not interested in sex like all their friends are.” that’s bananas. completely ridiculous at best, actively damaging at worst. like that’s a literal child, and it’s completely normal for 15 year olds to not be interested in sex. again, if you believe a 15 year old can be asexual, what does that say about how you think of teenagers in general?