My Anxiety Is...

 Over the last couple of months my anxiety has been and continues to be through the roof. My anxiety takes control over my body when I lay down to go to sleep. My anxiety races all over the place at a frenetic pace. It is like a bull in a china shop except the bull is inside me and the china shop are my emotions running amok. 

I have to get up and take sleeping medication to calm my body, my heart rate down so I can sleep. I am scared and full of fear. Some nights have been sleepless, some nights I awake at 3 or 4 and can’t go back to sleep. I don’t usually remember my dreams, now good or bad I am remembering my dreams and some are quiet vivid and intense. A couple of weeks ago i dreamt that I was stalking the Dumpster Fire. I felt nauseous and awoke in a cold sweat. Ugh.

My wife for years has been saying I am a bull in a china shop. I am loud, have a heavy foot (not the speeding kind), I walk loudly and I freeze at the worst possible time. Like feel immobile, can’t move. I have trouble processing information which leads to freezing which leads to withdrawing. I am afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. Like digging a deeper hole to get myself out. Does it work No.

All it does is make me feel even worse about myself and makes me feel incapable. My anxiety spikes and runs amok internally. I do not want that bull to run amok. I do not want to live in fear of my anxiety. I want to embrace it and turn it around so that it can work in my favour. I know this will not happen all the time it will get the better of me, however, I want to be in the place where this is the exception rather than the rule. I don’t want the bull in the china shop. I want the playful puppy. 

I know I can do this because I overcame a fear of heights. The CN tower has a glass floor on their observation level 103 floors up. I would see children sitting on the glass floor looking down. Just the mere sight of the glass floor I would convulse and hug the walls. In 2016 my last trip up to this floor I stood on the glass floor and even looked down for a few seconds and I didn’t hug the walls. Progress. Small baby steps. 

It will not be easy yet I can do it with small baby steps. I want to stand up to that bull(y) and not live in fear. Just watch me.