Anxiety.

Anxious.

I try not to be.

Be reasonable,

there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Just people.

People aren’t scary.

My heartbeat says otherwise.

There’s nothing to be afraid of.

I can’t stop sweating,

I can see and hear everything.

Hyperaware…..that’s what it’s called.

I think I’m going to be sick.

No need to be afraid, I tell myself.

But, everything else is telling me otherwise.

I feel like crying.

Like disappearing,

going into my house and never leaving.

******

I wrote this at LGBT group last night, as part of a poetry workshop.

I was feeling really anxious, as you can probably tell by le poem, so I just wrote what I was feeling in that moment, my physical responses and thought processes.

I didn’t think it was that great….pretty shit actually but when I shared it, I had a pretty positive response. Some people said that they could relate to it, which actually felt really good. It sounds weird….but a lot of the time my anxiety makes me feel really alone and hearing that others can relate makes me feel like less of a lone shaking leaf.

Obviously, I know that other people experience anxiety but because it’s not always obvious and fairly easy to hide, it’s really easy to feel like the only one.

Especially when Niagara Falls levels of sweat is rolling down my back and I feel like I’m going to start screaming from the stress, ‘The Grinch tries yoga’ style.

So, I’m sharing this today, in hopes of helping someone else feel a little less alone.

I hope y’all are having a wonderful day, hopefully not filled with anxiety.

If you are struggling (with anxiety, or anything), here are some healthy coping mechanisms, especially for if your out and about:

• Listening to music
• Practising mindfulness techniques, like the 5 senses exercise (focus on 1 thing you can taste, 2 things you can smell, 3 things you can hear, 4 things you can feel (touch) and 5 things you can see)~I actually use this one a lot and it’s really helpful. It can also be really good for developing your dream lucidity abilities, if your interested in that kind of thing. Another mindfulness technique that I find really helpful is ‘The Colour Game’. It works best if you do it with another person but you can also do it alone. Basically, all you do is: say colours that you see aloud, but different colours from the other person, kinda batting colours back and forth. Like eye spy but only with colours-at first-and no guessing. Eventually your going to run out of colours~you might be saddened like I was, realising that due to our limited human vision (in the majority) there’s not nearly enough colours to satisfy~but fear not, now you can move on to everything else you can see, making this technique very much eye spy without the guessing.
• Having an object which you can hold and feel, in order to feel grounded. An example of what this might be and what to do is: A pebble; which you can hold in your palm, focusing on it’s weight and how it feels against your skin.
• Writing down how you feel~writing my poem actually helped to release a lot of the stress I was feeling at the time. It can be in any form; a poem, a song, a rap….random words scattered on a page. And it doesn’t have to make sense, just let your words be free.