So I’m still up, lying in my bed, just thinking. I’ve been pretty anxious recently, but tonight I was significantly calmer than usual, which I thought was interesting. But then of course, I lie down to go to sleep, and my thoughts started to race again. I was really unhappy about that, because I was really excited about getting into bed and falling asleep. But here, I am, making a new blog, because I felt as though I was on the verge of having an epiphany about my anxiety, and I just had to write it out in order to get it on paper before I lost my train of thought.
So, tonight I’m thinking about the causes of my anxiety. I have a lot of anxiety and I feel like it controls my life. I hate it. I know that anxiety has bad effects on health. I’m a psychology student and I understand the basic origins of anxiety. My anxiety comes from both the outside world, but also from my inner self. I feel as though I worry about things that I should not worry about, and in effect, I just make my anxiety worst. My anxiety ranges from being anxious about really small things that should not matter, to pretty major things. Tonight, I realized that I seem to worry about things if I feel that I have no control over them. A while ago, I established that most of my anxiety is irrational. Now, I also have OCD, which I might not have mentioned before. But anyway, OCD is an anxiety disorder, so it is natural that I have a lot of anxiety. But in therapy, last week I realized that most of my anxiety is irrational. I understand that I’m not in danger all the time, but I think that I am just because that is the nature of OCD. It makes you think that and feel like there is an emergency, when in reality everything is okay. So now before bed my thoughts are racing, so I’m trying to go through my head and rationalize with myself. My goal is to let my brain know that I am safe and okay. So I’m sorting through my thoughts one by one, trying to see if I can eliminate some of this anxiety.
So, it seems as though a major theme I have is control. I want to be in control of everything. For example, a major fear that I have is fear of social settings because I don’t know how they will turn out, and how to handle them. I want to be able to have all of the control so that I can eliminate any negative or awkward interactions. I want to be able to lead the conversations and I want everything to go right, so that the other person will see me in a positive light. I want to be in control of the situation all the time. Now, I realize that this not possible, which is why I think I tend to shy away from a lot of social interactions, because of the fear of the unknown. I don’t know how the interaction will go, so I shy away, but then I feel bad and guilty afterward, because deep down I want to meet more people. I think that for the most part I need to realize that I cannot have control over everything. I need to realize that there will always be an unknown aspect of something. Nothing will ever be known completely, and I just have to realize that that is a part of life. Even though it is scary, it is just something that I will have to understand. I mean, I think that I have to realize I have control of a lot, and learn to let go of the little things that I cannot control, because there’s no point in worrying about it if I cannot control it or change it. So that’s my little conclusion for the night. I want to write some more, but I’m really tired and I have class in the morning, so I should really try to get some sleep. I will write some more later on.