I am not good at coping with my anxiety. When that second heartbeat starts up, and when I feel like the butterflies in my stomach are going to come up and out, I am at a loss. I don’t know who or what to reach for. Usually, I begin to listen to music and pace around my room, or I just pace without music. But today I watched a TED Talk, and although the first half was rather dry and contained a very bad joke, the last points really struck me. It was when she revealed three coping mechanisms for anxiety.
The first was after a philosopher’s motto, “everything worth doing is worth doing badly.” This is because people with anxiety, like me, tend to procrastinate and do not feel in control of things. This is due to perfection, I hate admitting it but it is. I have read before about how perfection is a major cause for procrastination but refuse to accept it as I appreciate perfection and don’t know how to live without it. But perfection is not all good, especially for those of us who suffer from anxiety. Perfection sets our standards too high and prohibits us from doing things unless they are done in this complicated over-the-top type of way. It makes us feel exasperated and overwhelmed, thus wanting to constantly postpone things instead of tackling them and bringing about procrastination. In order to regain that feeling of control and power over things, we need to simply jump into things whether the result comes out good or bad. Another tip which comes from a Pinterest post I believe is to start with the thing that thrills or satisfies you the most. Whether it be writing that pretty title or tearing out that page, do what you like the most first and go from there. It really helps you get into work mode. If you never start then you’re never going to finish. When you feel like giving up remember why you started. You could have a beautiful title with a shitty body paragraph, but hey, you started, you got something done. DO IT BADLY AND IMPROVE AS YOU GO ALONG.
The second coping mechanism was to forgive yourself. Be kinder to yourself and support yourself. Forgive yourself for any mistakes and instead learn from them and move on. Let it go, forgive yourself for not having enough courage to talk to that person or share out loud. The speaker specified that you cannot begin to HEAL until you do this.
Lastly, and this one really resonated with me due to a constant moral debate I have going on with myself, have a purpose and meaning in life. They say, “you can’t love others until you love others.” Years ago, when little what maybe like 6th grade me read this she was like “oh yeah totally makes sense” much philosophy much zen such woke much wow. But then I read and watched Fruits Basket. If you don’t know it you should definitely check it out it is amazing and made my cold heart ache. In a part of the series, this little girl, Kisa, is getting bullied in class because she is different and shy and has light hair. May I remind you that she is still in elementary and already getting bullied. Point is, she falls into depression at such a young age and refuses to go back to school and runs away. Once she is found, her teacher sends a letter home in which she includes the aforementioned quote. She pretty much refers to Kisa as the problem instead of the kids that bully her. For many years I have been thinking, “well I mean that is true no? It sounds true to me that you should love yourself first.” And it still unsettles me and gets me all philosophical and thoughtful. After this, her cousin and older-brother-type-of-figure, Hatsuharu, says something along the lines of “How disgusting, this is bullshit.” Which now that I think about it, makes sense as I previously said, the teacher was detailing the victim as the problem. Now after this talk, my mind is a bit clearer but still upset and at a crossroads. But it is now inclining towards the opposite side more and I am starting to get more answers. Yes, self-love is essential and extremely important, however, for people like me with anxiety, self-love is like asking a fish to run on land. We are not ready for that and would need a very long time full of evolution to develop what we need to get to that goal of self-love. Whatever we do in life, we cannot be fully happy until we know some else NEEDS US. That someone else DEPENDS on our ACCOMPLISHMENTS, or on the LOVE we have to SHARE. It is not that we need someone else to be happy in life, but mental health increases when you do something with someone else in mind. So, the speaker, and I too now, want you to ask yourself, do you do at least one thing with someone else in mind? This can be anything from feeding your dog to finishing a piece or work for future generations, even if they don’t know of your effort, this will make you realize the uniqueness and importance of/in your life.
I leave now to rest for a bit, to mediate if I will, and then put these mechanisms into place.
Here is the link to the TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWloIAQpMcQ
I hope this can help someone as it helped me :)
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