A secret about anxiety and some ideas to manage it.
A rather common disease that eats you up from the inside. Slowly and meticulously.
Anxiety is a silent, sneaky killer.
Some days it makes a fuss which we code as panic, and other days it’s quiet. Like a sleeping monster — but it’s dangerous. The moment something pokes it, it pounces.
It takes many shapes and forms — social, health, and generalised, yet we barely talk about it. Why?
Unbeknown to most, these different forms and “labels” refer to the same process:
it slowly bleeds you out and takes away all the joy
it stops you from trusting yourself and others
it finds a way to maintain itself
it is often a by-product or added layer to trauma
Unlike depression which sometimes presses down on you out of nowhere, anxiety affects the mind-body to the extent we see many physical forms of suffering.
Not mentioning the mental toll it puts on you.
I know you tried various things to manage it. I did too.
A standard (honest) list would include:
alcohol
drugs - legal or illegal, doesn't matter
numbing
distraction
avoidance
(I’m not judging you for these, these all have a time and a place).
However, the question is: do they work in the long term?
No.
Once you’ve accepted this, you perhaps start putting more effort into managing anxiety in different ways:
meditation
breathwork
therapy
exercise
plant medicine
These take you into a territory where you learn healthier coping strategies. You are on a good path.
There is no “one fit for all.” I cannot tell you to pick one of the above, and that will be it.
Instead, I invite you to experiment:
Notice when, where, with whom, and how anxiety hits
try different ways of managing it, perhaps be a bit meticulous about it, i.e., record your findings
talk to others — seriously, this is underrated
*This article was adapted from a Twitter thread by Kohlrabi Sushi*
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