Whilst I’m having an amazing time out here, I’ve also been reflecting over the last few days with a degree of sadness. Being around a group of younger people with such zest for life has really highlighted my battles with anxiety. Undoubtedly, temporary feelings of anxiety can be a good thing. Noticing when we feel anxious can help us make decisions in our best interests. If you sense anxiety whilst walking down a dark street alone at night, it’ll help you stay alert and on guard. But what I’m talking about is a feeling of continual anxiety – feeling like you’re always walking that dark street, irrespective of the reality.
Whether I’m worrying that my plane will fall out the sky, I won’t find my hotel, I’ll die on a bike ride or my clients back home won’t pay their bills and I’ll have to cancel my world trip… The list goes on. If there’s something to be anxious about, I’m there with bells on! And here’s the kicker – if I sense any form of relaxation I get anxious that I’m not anxious. I’m physically tired because my body is constantly in a state of being alert and I’m mentally exhausted from thinking about it.
I’m getting uneasy about the next 12 months. Who am I to think I deserve a trip around the world? Who am I to think it’s acceptable to defer Uni to travel? All the staff I had to let go in the old company don’t get to have this experience, why should I? What makes me special? I’ll be coming home to very little in the way of money. If I don’t do the trip I could invest in a new company, establish myself as a consultant and probably put a deposit on a house. Am I just being completely irresponsible?
My sadness stems from knowing I wasn’t always like this. I believe this generalised anxiety is a product of the events of 2015 and a recognition of all the things that went before that. My therapist often wisely reminds that I can never be “the person I was back then” because by definition, ‘back then’ has passed. But I do miss my less anxious self a lot. I’ve certainly experienced personal growth in many ways, but generalised anxiety is something I would have preferred not to have inherited along the way. If you’ve ever experienced anxiety like this, you’ll know the steady increased heart rate, the catastrophes you create in your mind (with no supporting evidence) and the voice of your unhelpful inner critic, who tells you you’re stupid for experiencing such thoughts and feelings.
I’m not quite sure yet how you move on from anxiety and my fear is that I’ll be stuck with it forever (that’s my anxious mind working again – anxiety it would seem is it’s own worst enemy). But I like to think I’m more optimistic than my anxious self. In a way, cycling through Na Trang with a trust that others were looking out for me is a great metaphor for how I’m trying to deal with my life right now. I’m fortunate to have some wonderful friends and family who’ve got my back, but I’m still behind the handlebars.
There’s a reason why this blog is called ‘learning to love me’ – because I know I’ve got a long way to go before I can truly say I love and accept myself as I am. I’m my own harshest critic (I think many of us are) but I’d really like to get to a point where I can have a more rationale, kind conversation with that inner critic and believe it less. In many ways I think that will help reduce my anxieties, at least I hope so.
I’m intrigued to find out if, how and when I’ll have an ‘epiphany’ and suddenly feel liberated, or whether things will take a different course. It’s certainly going to be an interesting journey regardless.
Cover Picture: Inside one of the caves in Marble Mountain, Vietnam.