Tags
Anxiety, anxiety disorder, awareness, claustrophobia, irrational, mental-health, Organizations, self talk, snow, snow day, snowy, weather
I used to love snow as a kid. I can remember turning my PJ’s inside out and hoping my dance teacher’s would hip would hurt (because that meant it really would snow!). Hey, I was in school too. Today I hate it…. no, I loath it. The second the weatherman says the word snow I get anxious (hands sweaty-chest tight-anxious).
You can imagine how thrilled I was to wake up to a nice thick layer of white stuff on the ground and a steady fall from the sky… not.
A-N-X-I-E-T-Y
One of my biggest triggers of anxiety is not being able to leave or “escape” a situation. Being stuck at home because of weather causes difficulty. For most of the day I worked hard to distract with cleaning, organizing, playing with my cat, watching movies, doing art projects, and make phone calls, but man I am excited the day is coming to a close.
At the start of (and at certain times throughout) the day I felt annoyed, frustrated, anxious, nervous, and a whole host of other negative things with the biggest irrational thought fueling those feelings was “it’s never going to end.” Challenging negative thoughts is difficult (for everyone) but all day I kept saying to myself “tomorrow you can go anywhere you want.” and “this isn’t so bad.” (even if sometimes I didn’t believe it.)
Now, about to go to bed, and having survived my own anxiety I feel proud because it’s not the snow that made the day difficult it was my reaction to it.
Sometimes we have adverse reactions to everyday things and it’s learning to cope with things we don’t like, hate, loathe, or cannot tolerate that give us the ability to function day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, year-to-year.
Not everyday is a “snow day”. In fact so many more are worth fighting through those that are.
My name is Erin and This is Where I Stand.