“Anxiety is literally having conspiracy theories about yourself” -Some viral tweet on Twitter lol.
Ermagerd Heller!!!!!
Miss me? Say yes.
If you haven’t read my most recent Instagram Post then click over and read it because I have a HUGE thank you to all of my readers. I can’t express into words how much it means to me just to hit this small milestone with my page. My readers are everything to me and I’m so grateful that there are people who have stuck around this long lol.
With that being said, let’s get into this week’s post…
If you know me (or if you don’t and you’ve just interacted with me once or twice) you probably know that I am a very anxious person.
For the lucky ones out there, who have little to no idea what it feels like to live a life where you experience heart palpitations on a daily basis over mundane tasks: first off, congratulations lmao. Secondly, this shit is not a “fad”. What a lot of people fail to realize is that you can be anxious- but not have anxiety…lol. Being anxious before a test, a first date, your first day of school, work, or waiting in line at Cedar Point: are all normal behaviors for the context of that specific feeling (not feeling anxious ever is a great indicator that you might be a sociopath lol.) Living with actual anxiety is a tad different. It’s the feeling of your mind racing 24/7. It’s feeling a tightness in your chest that literally does not go away no matter how many guided breathing exercises you do with your Apple watch, or how many yoga classes you attend. It’s second-guessing friendships you’ve had for years, romantic relationships you don’t think you deserve, it’s convincing yourself you are literally dying the minute you’re slightly feeling sick, and a lot of the time, beating yourself up for having a mindset like this all together. It will force you into believing the absolute worst out of situations, it will make you anticipate metaphorical car crashes (and tbh sometimes literal…I’m a really bad driver) on your path of life… and if you let your mind run too fast to catch- you’ll let yourself go a very long time not ever being able to see that it’s all really not supposed to be this hard lol.
Mental health is something we avoid talking about because we think it makes us weak- we think it makes us crazy, undesirable, and stupid. Having dealt with this for literally as long as I can remember, it’s given me almost 24 years of practice managing this skeleton in my closet. It’s made me realize that I am the strong person I am because of the anxiety I’ve had to live with my whole life. Anxiety makes you stronger, it makes you braver, it makes empathetic, needed and wanted, and it makes you so emotionally intelligent to the point where you wish you didn’t give so many fucks, and it makes you perfectly imperfect. Anxiety isn’t something you should feel like you have to hide from the people you love.
When I was in college my anxiety was literally awful. It was such a toxic environment that seemed to pull my attention, priorities, and feelings every fucking direction, stretching me WAY too thin (shout out to all my CMU greek life grads aye!!) As a result I struggled immensely. Luckily for me, I had (and still have) really amazing friends, some of which had experience with their own anxiety issues, and some that didn’t understand at all but just knew (and still know) how to be a really good friend. College is where I learned a HUGE important lesson about the people I chose (still choose) to surround myself with and that is:
If someone really loves you, and I mean REALLY loves you, they will never stop trying to understand, and be there for you no matter what you’re going through.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, life is all about choices; and no dumb dumb, we cannot CHOOSE to have anxiety or not, that isn’t what I’m saying… But the way I see it is that I can choose how I play the cards I’m dealt: I can choose to eat breakfast at 6 am or I can choose to eat at 10 am, I can choose to stay in or go out, I can choose to surround myself with shit, scumbag people or I can choose to actually hangout with people who give a shit about my well-being. I can choose all these things just the same way I can choose to either let the shitty parts of my life become my life, or I can stop being a little bitch, acknowledge the thoughts that anxiety shoves in my frontal lobe, and then le t t h e m g o .
So, to all my fellow anxious weirdos out there I’ve probably offended you, right?
“Oh mY eFfInG gOd ThAt’S sO mEsSeD uP I cAn’T jUsT tUrN OFF My AnXiEtYyYyYyY?!?!”
No, you can’t. I get it; remember?
But when the time comes to look back on your life and all you can see are the times you skipped out on shit because you thought your life sucked, you’re gonna be really disappointed when you realize you’re the only one who made your life suck…
For me, I’m a big overthinker. I’ll take literally six words someone says out loud to me that they probably don’t even remember saying, and it will be written on the inside of my skull with Sharpie marker for legitimately weeks. To completely avoid this situation it would be SO easy for me to just be like “hey you know what I’m just going to stop fucking talking to everyone” and eject myself from ever being involved in a conversation that’s going to make me feel like shit for no reason ever again! Byeee! The slight problem with this is that although I’m avoiding all the things that could hurt me, I’m also avoiding all the things that could make me feel great.
For years, I let my anxiety stop me from doing a lot. I would leave places early, I would get completely ready, have one sip of a drink and decide to stay in, I’d avoid going to parties all together, skip hangouts, dinner plans, and sometimes even avoid going downstairs in my own house because I was too anxious to even have a conversation with anyone. Anxiety can be crippling and the people around you won’t even realize what’s happening. So, if this is you, let me tell you that it gets better, it really really does- but like… you have to want it to. Your anxiety is never going to go away (sorry to break that to you if you weren’t aware lol) so learning to deal with and cope with it, learning to understand yourself and in turn, letting other people in deep enough to understand too, getting rid of the ugly people who don’t care enough to understand, and giving yourself grace is the only way to survive, to learn, and to actually enjoy life.
So, when life gives you lemons, don’t squirt them in people’s eyes; take a deep breath, throw those lemons in some hot tea, take some Ashwagandha (fr here’s the Amazon link), go outside and eat a banana or something, and reclaim your life back.
Life’s too short not to fucking love it.
Until next week suburbia…
SINCE YOUR GIRL IS BACK TO POSTING REGULARLY!
xoxo,
Carlie Bradshaw
Sex & The Suburbs 