YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

They say I am only as sick as my secrets. Thus, if I bring out my anxieties in the daylight, and quantify them, I can start to mess with them. Which is only fair because anxiety has had its chance to mess with me

That is my hypothesis, anyway. I propose to experiment with making my anxieties less secret and therefore less powerful. Seeing them here, in black and white, will make me see them for the size they are, which actually could be pretty big, still.

One final thought: I am super grateful for worries: I see them as a signal from my unconscious mind that I need to take action.

Onto this week's anxieties, with approximate % of the whole of my anxieites:

(I'll be honest, but not always name my exact anxieties here. They won't be anything salacious or even interesting, but some things I'm not interested in sharing. Such anxietes will be set off with: [text] Lastly %'s might not add up to 100, since this is an informal survey of my week's anxieties.)

1. Tailgaiting
drive to work 60%
drive home at night 15%
weekends 5%
2. [Professional anxiety] 25%
3. Not earning enough money 20% (subtle, but powerful)
4. Not dating 10% (Sigh)
5. Existential loneliness 5%
6. Climate change 5%
7. Low on caffeine 25%
8. Fairly regular/routine tension headaches on the weekends 55%

So there you have it. Most of my anxiety comes from fools tailgaiting me as I drive into work, and tension headaches that happen on average one third of my weekends. I'll post during the week about what steps/actions I am taking to mitigate/reduce the effects of these anxieties, especially so I don't get tension headaches.

Thanks for listening. Updates to follow.

Please practice meditation, at your own pace. I hate to think of you suffering, oak, under the 55% of tension headaches. You deserve better.

Thanks Manuel Moe. I will certainly take your advice about meditation.

In fact next I will post about ways and action to reduce my anxieties. Physical things, mostly. Like hiking and yoga stretches. I am going to make it.

Thanks again.

This is somewhat similar to an activity my therapist assigned me called "thought records". Given that, until recently, most of my thoughts were anxieties, my list and corresponding percentages would look a little like yours. Written in a list on a page, it revealed how irrational most of my anxieties are, and I was able to separate out the things I can actually do something about. Anyway, I think this is a great idea and I hope you keep it up. I hope your headaches improve soon; I know how terrible that can be.

Hmmmm.

Here are mine:

Will never make enough money to save for retirement and buy a house with a yard so I can have a dog and take a vacations.
People don't like me.
I will never rise professionally
I'm ugly.
I will never feel like I have a family.
I'm scared to have a pet.
I'm fat.
I'm angry and old and cynical and I hate myself.

The fact that I am in a much better mood today makes it possible for me to write these down. I feel a bit better having written them, and with some of them I can see how (1) unreasonable they are, and (2) how I globalizing my anxiety. And wow, how mean am I to myself?????Jesuz!!!!!!!

This is so interesting and insightful! I completely agree that we need to start bringing our anxieties and depressing thoughts into light. As long as you keep it in the dark, it will fester and grow. It takes a lot of guts to put it out there, but the feeling of freedom and empowerment is priceless. I'm taking baby steps with people in expressing my darkness. And the surprising thing is that when I put it out there, people are usually agreeing with me or say it's natural. Everybody has some sort of darkness inside them that they are afraid to let out and when you do it, I think it encourages others and they're relieved. You become more approachable and real. But of course, baby steps are key.
I love your positive attitude with your worries. What we resist, persist. When I get stuck in a rut with my thought and think there's no way out of it, I try and accept it and hopefully love it. That's the only way you can release your negative thoughts, I believe. So turning your worries into your teacher is such a positive way to deal with it and maybe the only real way to overcoming it. My list would be:
1. Growing old alone after my husband passes away, being helpless physically and mentally due to being all alone because I don't have kids, being mistreated in an old folks' home, and my fibromyalgia worsening with age (basically anything having to do with aging): 80%
2. Having all sorts of anxieties (social anxiety, agoraphobia, anxiety with authority): 15%
3. Facebook anxiety (having to feel like I have to compete with my ex-high school friends, feeling jealous and bitter, thinking how pathetic they are for behaving like we are still in high school and it's a big popularity contest but being sucked into it, etc.): 10%
Mine doesn't add up to 100% either, but oh well.
Enjoyed your post!