Posted on 12th Aug, 2022 in Adventures
Hello friends - it's been a long time since I've posted here. I highly doubt many of you were waiting in bated breath.
Today I want to journal and write on the topics of existing, anxiety, and confidence. Three heavy - but abstract - words that will impact your life significantly over time. The id, the ego, the scrolling, the coffee, the long hours, the short sleeps.
As a person who creates, a self described creative, I found myself falling victim to the badly ill-informed viewpoint of ignoring any signs of mental illness or maladies, as addressing them 'might modify or change the art'. This is not a healthy, nor accurate (in most cases) viewpoint.
This led to an eventual breakdown - something that was 'regular' every 3-5 years for me (!!!) - and diagnosis of General Anxiety Disorder, with hints of a few other things, namely looping compulsions as thinking exercise.
The next obvious step in America is medication. We tried the normal, heavy handed first-wave antidepressants and things like small doses of allergy medicine to placate bouts of anxiety. Most of this didn't help after an initial placebo period, nothing beyond baseline anyways.
You cannot lose hope at this step, human bodies are a fickle instrument of stasis that we hardly understand, let alone can medicate accurately against. I went through three major waves of ADs before finding one that worked. Also - adding beta blockers to my regimen ad-hoc was a literal life saver. Beta blockers will not stop the mental thoughts or loops - but when it comes to performance, they will steady your breathing and your hands. You can do this. You will do this.
All of this we've spoken about so far is short term, in the grand scheme of things. We've not talked about how to make this sustainable, how to ensure our changes are accepted and become long lasting. This comes from the even harder part, in my opinion: the work. I'm a big believer now in therapy. I'm very sure many of you have had awful experiences, and just like medication, I just plea that you try a few varieties before giving up.
Therapy with a licensed, qualified therapist is akin to working out with a licensed personal trainer, nutritionist, and psychologist all at once. A qualified and well matched therapist will hear you - offer advice, challenge your way of thinking, and ask you to dive deep.
Therapy is where your confidence will come from. As many of us aged, we went from confidence to uneasiness in our 20s and 30s. Confidence can and will return, and therapy can and will assist in this. This is not the final step, however.
In the end, we still need to take better care of ourselves. Whether it was anxiety in the first place, or the habits themselves leading to anxiety; more often than not a person deep in anxiousness will find themselves wrapped up in 'bad habits', unhealthy eating, poor friendships, the like.
Once you've gotten the short term (medication) and the medium term (therapy) in check, I behoove you to read a book like Ray Dalio's Principles - and establish your own written, new set of principles. I find myself being anxious about things and situations in which I'm unsure about my own principles. Being prepared, before a situation occurs, is a super power in and of itself.
Cheers, -cs
