My Favorite Pre-Drink is : Anxiety

Definition: When you keep sippin on that overindulgent drink of panic/stimulation

Hangover: The spiral you are sliding down because of what you spun in your mind the night before

Have you ever taken a marble and put it in a gravity pit, its a huge funnel (tornado) activity? You put marbles in and you watch them spin around and around until they fall through the hole. When children are doing this activity, they like to put a lot of marbles in at one time and tend to get very excited when they all fly out the bottom. When I say my thoughts are spiraling, that is exactly how I feel. One marble, one taunting thought, gets put in and my mind spins and spins and spins. Unlike the gravity pit, it takes forever for my thoughts to escape my head. The spinning for me isn’t mindless like the children’s activity. The anxious thoughts I am feeling is NON-STOP, the marbles take forever to come out the bottom, the spinning feels like it is endless! I can’t get it out of my head. I continue mull over the thought over and over and over until something takes my mind off of it, such as; self care. IF, I am in a super anxious state then it feels like the analogy I gave above.

Sometimes there is reasons I am feel anxious ie: an event is coming up, or I have a social encounter that is hard for me. But sometimes the cause of my spiraling is the aftermath of being on overdrive. The positive side of my anxiety is that it forces me to get things done and forces me to thrive. The extreme negative is, the overcoming thoughts. All the fun events we had during the weekend I was able to hide my anxiety during the excitement. But the moment everything calmed down they busted into my head. Like wooahhh I’m way (drunk)/ overstimulated and overwhelmed. I had a lot good conversations with family and friends who I haven’t seen in awhile, experienced multiple fun activities with my husband and kids and most importantly keep a busy schedule to keep my mind busy from the exhaustuation, or so I thought.

I thought I was keeping my mind busy from the racing thoughts and exhaustion by staying in overdrive. Funny part is, like anything else in life you have to deal with the crap at some point. So me keeping myself busy only delayed and compounded the inevitable. I guess my spiral is the aftermath of me ignoring my self care all weekend. Yes I am that fragile, I have to do self care everyday or I’ll fall behind on myself. It’s that serious and I still think I can skimp out when I feel ok. Its like when people stop taking their meds because they feel fine. Well, some meds are meant to keep you from getting sick and some are to help with the temporary pain. My self care and medication is not just for the pain at the moment but for preventing the sickness. Anyways, I didn’t do anything in the self care realm this weekend because I was happily giving to my family. I didn’t think twice about everything that was going on or all the the emotions I was empathically engulfing.

I am an empath, meaning I can feel and share emotions with others. Which is amazing when helping someone, but also is very hard to deal with the aftermath of someone else’s feelings.

When I am helping people or engaging in fun activities, I don’t think that anything is wrong with the overstimulation of emotions. I do the all or nothing thinking, such as; “Everything is good because I am helping,” to “Now everything is bad because its over.” I struggle with finding the happy medium of yes this weekend was super exciting and I got to celebrate with family but it was also emotionally exhausting and I need to do something to take care of the exhaustion before I spiral. None of the above is saying I take back the fun time I had with the family or that I done want to engage in good conversation. I am just saying that I need to be better at taking inventory of my emotions and needs after the stimulating convo/event.

I do need to point out that sometimes the anxiety spiral of thoughts is not related to anything upcoming or recent (that I can pinpoint). Sometimes I wake up anxious, or I go to sleep with racing thoughts. Some of the thoughts that I have are nowhere relevant to things going on in my life but I will somehow find myself spinning on them. Things that I have done in my past or conversations that I had with someone years ago come to mind and I feel as if I cant turn them off. I know this is common but when you struggle with severe anxiety it is a switch you can’t just turn off. I will go from one haunting memory or thought to catastrophizing my future. It is the most annoying thing in the world, having your thoughts and past haunt you repeatedly. In return causing you to spiral, sometimes even into depression if I don’t take control in time.