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Thoughts About Anxiety
Dec. 15th, 2013 07:02 pmI understand the irony of this title.
A few weeks ago, I began to really give credence to the idea that anxiety has been a big factor in how I've gone through my life. How many decisions have I made because I worried or tense or wanted to avoid something? A lot, probably.
Anxiety has two parts, as far as I can tell.
The thoughts part: Some days I have a lot of thoughts. Other days, not as many (but still a lot). When I get upset, the number of thoughts I have tends to multiply. By quite a bit. When I have a lot of thoughts, I often want to sort them out by writing. So I usually write about things that fascinate or bother me. I think I make better decisions about things after I write about them, so if I'm having a lot of thoughts, maybe it could be a good practice to write about them first.
This reminds me of something. I used to get stuck on timed writing assignments in school. Even now, writing takes me a long time. A post can take hours. It's hard to keep typing and typing like they tell you do--more than I want to admit, I forget how the rest of sentence is supposed to go in the middle of the sentence. I'll have a great thought or sentence planned out, then I'll space out for just a moment, and when I return I'll have lost the momentum of the thought.
Momentum of the thought? Do other people's thoughts have momentum? A lot of the time it feels like I have to keep a thought moving, or it'll fall to the side. It'll run out of gas. And we'll just never get there.
The second part, the tension part: most of cognitive-based psychotherapy focuses on the thoughts or beliefs you have. Sometimes I refute the beliefs or thoughts (verbal thoughts) but there are still these worries or bad sensations there. They don't abate. Then the thoughts--or cognitive distortions--will slowly, slowly creep back, like water spilling into the rowboat or clutter in the room. Why am I up to my ankles again?
I worry about a lot of things. I worry that I am just rambling about myself in a way that doesn't help other people. So no one's going to read this. I worry I'm going in circles and haven't really derived many insights. I worry I'll basically look and feel the same way for a very long time.
"Buy better beer, don't try to be a better person," Killer Mike said, amidst a bunch of otherwise sensible advice. I worry about that being true for me.
What's so bad if that all ends up being true? Sometimes it feels like I can only stand where I am because of where I've promised to be in the future. Time feels like a loan, and so far I'm just getting further and further into debt. I look at the systematically bad choices I've made over the years and see problems no one really has answers for; I have to figure it out for myself. What if I'm just not qualified to figure it out? What if the game really is being a goopy, sloppy mess and being okay with that? If I acknowledge that, do I have to cur myself off from all the friends who are cheering for me to come out of a lifetime funk? (They think it's just 5 years, but haven't read my LJ.) Where am I standing, statistically? Am I standing ankle deep in some kind of denial?
I look ahead sometimes when most of my writing has less to do with sifting through my own problematic refuse. What joys could I bring to people? What stories could I tell? What inquiries could I make? Another worry is that if things ever clear up, I really won't have much to talk about, write about. That my lifetime of writing was one huge anxiety attack.
The worries just kind of happen until I can really steer my attention in a different direction. That also just kind of happens.
I have a lot of thoughts. They're more like things that happen than things that I do, but when I'm having a lot of thoughts I can also have thoughts about a lot of different things. Maybe it's a kind of weather. It's raining thoughts? Time to get the urns and tarps and pots and pans; we'll distill it have plenty to drink and grow with for a while.
A few weeks ago, I began to really give credence to the idea that anxiety has been a big factor in how I've gone through my life. How many decisions have I made because I worried or tense or wanted to avoid something? A lot, probably.
Anxiety has two parts, as far as I can tell.
- Tension
- Thoughts
The thoughts part: Some days I have a lot of thoughts. Other days, not as many (but still a lot). When I get upset, the number of thoughts I have tends to multiply. By quite a bit. When I have a lot of thoughts, I often want to sort them out by writing. So I usually write about things that fascinate or bother me. I think I make better decisions about things after I write about them, so if I'm having a lot of thoughts, maybe it could be a good practice to write about them first.
This reminds me of something. I used to get stuck on timed writing assignments in school. Even now, writing takes me a long time. A post can take hours. It's hard to keep typing and typing like they tell you do--more than I want to admit, I forget how the rest of sentence is supposed to go in the middle of the sentence. I'll have a great thought or sentence planned out, then I'll space out for just a moment, and when I return I'll have lost the momentum of the thought.
Momentum of the thought? Do other people's thoughts have momentum? A lot of the time it feels like I have to keep a thought moving, or it'll fall to the side. It'll run out of gas. And we'll just never get there.
The second part, the tension part: most of cognitive-based psychotherapy focuses on the thoughts or beliefs you have. Sometimes I refute the beliefs or thoughts (verbal thoughts) but there are still these worries or bad sensations there. They don't abate. Then the thoughts--or cognitive distortions--will slowly, slowly creep back, like water spilling into the rowboat or clutter in the room. Why am I up to my ankles again?
I worry about a lot of things. I worry that I am just rambling about myself in a way that doesn't help other people. So no one's going to read this. I worry I'm going in circles and haven't really derived many insights. I worry I'll basically look and feel the same way for a very long time.
"Buy better beer, don't try to be a better person," Killer Mike said, amidst a bunch of otherwise sensible advice. I worry about that being true for me.
What's so bad if that all ends up being true? Sometimes it feels like I can only stand where I am because of where I've promised to be in the future. Time feels like a loan, and so far I'm just getting further and further into debt. I look at the systematically bad choices I've made over the years and see problems no one really has answers for; I have to figure it out for myself. What if I'm just not qualified to figure it out? What if the game really is being a goopy, sloppy mess and being okay with that? If I acknowledge that, do I have to cur myself off from all the friends who are cheering for me to come out of a lifetime funk? (They think it's just 5 years, but haven't read my LJ.) Where am I standing, statistically? Am I standing ankle deep in some kind of denial?
I look ahead sometimes when most of my writing has less to do with sifting through my own problematic refuse. What joys could I bring to people? What stories could I tell? What inquiries could I make? Another worry is that if things ever clear up, I really won't have much to talk about, write about. That my lifetime of writing was one huge anxiety attack.
The worries just kind of happen until I can really steer my attention in a different direction. That also just kind of happens.
I have a lot of thoughts. They're more like things that happen than things that I do, but when I'm having a lot of thoughts I can also have thoughts about a lot of different things. Maybe it's a kind of weather. It's raining thoughts? Time to get the urns and tarps and pots and pans; we'll distill it have plenty to drink and grow with for a while.
