“To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!” – Charlie Chaplin
Today has been a really “off” day for myself and I couldn’t really put my finger on what was bothering me. I sat down with the intention of writing a list of the things that are causing me anxiety and after 30 minutes my blank piece of paper was still blank. I did have a bit of a giggle to myself, here I am having heart palpitations and trying to control my breathing because I was worked up about, well…….nothing! As ridiculous as it sounds it’s a common reality for people who live with anxiety so I thought instead of sitting and dwelling in my current state I would make light of the situation and write a list of 10 daily struggles of an anxious person with a bit of humour added in.
You’re constantly stressed about that thing that might happen but probably wont happen but still MIGHT happen.
You suddenly start to panic because you don’t feel anxious
When your phone rings and you don’t know the number and you cant figure out why they would be calling you? How did they get your number? Is it the police? Did someone die? So you ignore the call.
If there was an award for over analysing things you would be the undefeated champion
When you make the devastating mistake of agreeing to a social event when all you want to do is be at home with no human contact.
You find yourself googling how a movie ends because you get too emotionally invested to be able to wait 2 hours to see if your favourite character dies (You need to mentally prepare for that!)
You get chest pains when you go to do that thing you have done a million times before and you have no idea why but now its literally a matter of life or death.
You often find yourself lying awake at 3AM pondering what would have happened if you passed that grade 2 exam 15 years ago.
You often find yourself cleaning an already spotless house because spotless isn’t clean enough.
You could be having the time of your life but your anxiety tags along too and reminds you of all the things that could potentially go wrong.
I hope that any fellow anxiety sufferers could relate and maybe even smile at a couple of these. I’m a big believer that if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.
Thanks for reading ☮