Maybe you have a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder or maybe you’re just someone who gets anxious in certain situations, either way it is zero percent fun am I right? I remember my first anxiety attack, I started my first week of high school and couldn’t deal with the change of leaving my precious grade school lolz. The whole ‘I feel like I’m dying, this is it and this is how it ends’ feeling presented itself for the first time…yay! Since working on my mental game, anxiety attacks are pretty nonexistent in my life, but I do still have anxious thoughts about random situations.
I’ve read a few books and or quotes about anxiety and my favorite, although I can’t remember where it comes from states, “If you are depressed you are living in the past, if you are anxious you are living in the future”. I’m not saying this is true and or accurate for everyone, but I personally think it’s true for me from an anxiety perspective. What does this mean you ask?…. ( THIS PARAGRAPH WAS WRITTEN A WEEK AGO AND THEN I LOOK AT MY ‘YOU ARE A BADASS’ quote FROM YESTERDAY…WEIRD! I GUESS NOW I KNOW WHERE IT CAME FROM lolz).

Okay so, ever find yourself sitting and stewing over possible situations that might arise or what could happen until you find yourself so fixated on potential outcomes that it becomes a real scenario?! I know I have, so much so that my heart pounds, my stomach, hurts and I’m instantly upset over a fake scenario that I created. Literally, just my thoughts are producing a physical reaction–so insane! Thinking about the future isn’t always bad, but when we fixate on the unknown and assume that it’s only going to be bad, that’s when we run into trouble. Learning how to manage my thoughts has helped me tremendously, not that it’s fool proof, but I can say I’ve for sure added some years back onto my life…yussss.
If you’re ever feeling anxious, trying rolling through a few of these questions:

1. Is this situation real? Wait what, of course it’s real…..no, is it truly real or is your mind making it seem real.
2. There might be a suboptimal situation you’ll have to face today, but is this situation negative or is that how your mind is framing it? Could it be positive and if so what can yearn?
3. Similar to number 1—is anything actually happening or are you daydreaming a mile a minute over there!?

Sometimes situations really can suck, but let’s not make them worse than they are and more importantly, let’s not make the yucky situations REAL especially if they’re not!
Let’s enjoy life as it is, not what our minds make it out to be.

Until next time my friends,

-Lauren