Anxiety, fear and the antidote to worry?

I’m afraid a lot of the time. Scared, anxious, nervous, worried. In my mind, these are really all synonyms for fear in some way. We can place fear into many different levels; a little bit worried, really scared, full on phobia of spiders/heights/flying/forks and any number of very legitimate phobias. An antidote to worry often sounds too good to be true.

There is, of course, a place in our life for worries. Often, we hold on to fear to keep us safe, and/or as a trauma response. Collective fear is often also perpetuated by mass media too. I acknowledge that I am very fortunate that my fears are largely unfounded and that I am able to write about them in this way.

A lot of the time, the little fears, the diagnosed anxiety holds me back a lot more than it needs too.

My highly-functioning anxious mind loves to think of the 72 things that could go wrong, and never consider the possibility that it might go right.

I will do everything I can to avoid putting myself in a situation I am anxious about; and often my anxiety is lying to me. I spent my first week in Cambodia worried that I was going to be charged $1000’s after I broke my bikes wing mirror. When I returned it after the weeks hire, I was charged $3 for the new wing mirror. I gave him $5 and my housemate insisted I kept the memory in the forefront of my mind as a reminder next time I was worrying.

An uncomprehensive list of other things I have been anxious/worried about over the last month:

• Riding my motorbike anywhere and everywhere
• Where to park when I go to the supermarket, yoga, shopping, for dinner
• Thinking I don’t have enough money (I always worry about this)
• Maybe I am too fat
• I shouldn’t be worrying about being too fat in a world where people can’t eat
• I am vain for even thinking about my size
• Worrying I am sleeping too much
• Then worrying I am sleeping too little
• Maybe the people I’ve met don’t actually like me

I could go on, but I am sure by now you get the picture. Sometimes I think my brain just needs something to worry about. But I don’t want to accept these worries as facts. And I have got so much better over the last few years of hearing the worries, and jumping over them.

When I decided to move to Cambodia, a few close friends were concerned for my safety and for my career – and wondered why I wasn’t worried too. I asked them, “what’s the worst that can happen?” Barring death and assault, the worst-case scenario for me was that I end up back where I started – home in Norfolk with my dog and my family. The truth is I was (obviously) worried. Not so much about my career, but about my safety, and whether I would make any friends, and about who the fuck did I think I was to be moving to the other side of the world? But I have learnt that I need to jump over all of those fears. It doesn’t mean they’re not there. But it means they don’t stop me. Most of the time.

It doesn’t always work.

I still avoid difficult conversations. Have to be forced to date. And get tuk-tuk’s when I’m overly worried about parking.

There are times in my life when anxiety and fear has held me back from making changes I both needed and wanted to make.

It took me a year after I identified that I needed to stop drinking to actually stop. I wasn’t physically dependant on alcohol. I didn’t drink every day. And yet even after I got a month or so alcohol-free together; I’d drink again. Now I look back, and read back my writing during that year (end of 2015 and most of 2016), what was largely holding me back was how worried I was about what not drinking would mean for the life I held then. I was worried about losing friends, about how I’d be confident without drinking, about what my identity would look like without a glass of wine in my hand. I wish I could go back and whisper in 2015 Laurie’s ear; “what’s the worst that could happen?” and give her a big hug. I would have saved myself a lot of difficult situations if I’d quit when I first wanted too.

It’s not just drinking that’s kept me stuck. (Is it ever). Subconsciously worrying about keeping up with friends saw me putting holidays on credit cards and left me in (valid) anxiety-inducing credit-card debt situation. I didn’t properly learn that lesson until recently when my therapist taught me how to say no. For my anxiety, and fear, and worries, leads to a people pleasing tendency that I no longer want. Fear that people don’t like me, that I’m not enough, leads me to saying yes more than I want too. I am sure I am not the only one.

I watched a short video by The School of Life recently, Self-Hatred and Anxiety. I’d recommend watching the whole thing but I found it helpful to find an antidote to worry and have pasted my favourite learnings below:

“The temptation, with dealing with anxiety [worries], is always and invariably to focus on the ostensible cause of our worry: the journey to the airport, the forthcoming speech, the letter one is waiting for, the presentation one has to hand in…

But if we proceed more psychologically, we might begin in a different place. With great kindness and no disrespect, we may step past the objective content of anxiety and look instead at something else: how the anxious person feels about themselves.

The cure isn’t, therefore, to try to dispel anxieties with logic, it is to try to dispel it with love; it is to remind the anxious person (who may be ourselves) that we are not inherently wretched, that we have a right to exist, that past neglect wasn’t deserved, that we should feel tenderly towards oneself – and that we need, both metaphorically and probably practically too, a very long hug.

The logic of this analysis is truly counter-intuitive. It suggests that when panic next descends, one should not spend too long on the surface causes of the worry and instead, try to address the self-hatred fuelling the agitation. Anxiety is not always anxiety: sometimes it is just a very well-disguised, entrenched and unfair habit of disliking who we are.”

This disliking of who I am fits well with the way I have begun to put space between me and my fears. It aligns with the anxiety I had around giving up drinking, the hours I spent worrying about saying “I can’t afford it” to people who love me most in the world, and about the move overseas.

It reminds me to pause and look at my concerns so that I might find an antidote to worry

Where possible, to physically pause and take a moment to remember that I am not my anxiety, or my fear. Do I need to find a solution to the fear? Is my anxiety keeping me safe, or is it an outdated hunter gather response? Would a long hug, cup of tea and some self-soothing be the best response? Sometimes, I need to do both.

Sometimes, a hug will do.

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