Ugh! I Don't Want to Accept Myself!
I flicked the light on in the kitchen and started my morning routine. The animals take their positions for their morning cheese treat, and I go through the usual motions, take meds, make coffee, brush my teeth, check emails, and let the dog out. I love the quiet of the house the anticipation of a full day (where of course, I will accomplish everything on my list). After I take my meds, I need to wait 30 minutes before having any liquids or food. I have turned this 30 minutes into a game—how much can I get done in 30 minutes—more so, how efficient can I be in 30 minutes. For the most part, this is a fun challenge, a game I play with myself that I enjoy, but on this particular morning, my anxiety is high, and this light-hearted game has turned into a compulsive life or death challenge. Before I am aware of it, I am running around the kitchen, checking things off my list, cleaning the counters, refilling the soap dispensers, taking out the trash; oh, maybe I should clean out the fridge. My light-hearted morning has turned into me rushing around the kitchen, trying to cram as much as I can into my 30-minute window. This, my friends, is high functioning anxiety.
As our dog Watterson and I head out the door for our morning walk, I start thinking about the fact that I am so anxious. What is going on? Why are you so anxious? I ask myself. And then start listing off all the possibilities and start problem-solving everything that is going on.
God, I hate my anxiety---what is wrong with me? Why is this such a thing? I must be crazy!! I mean, come on, this is ridiculous! Why can’t I get it under control?!
And then I remembered a conversation I had this week with a friend about acceptance, “I struggle with acceptance because if I accept myself, none of this stuff will get fixed.” She said with a sigh gesturing at herself in exasperation. I said to her, “You know what is so hard?!? And I still struggle to remember. The opposite is true; it is only when you accept yourself that you will feel better. Because through acceptance, you can make changes.”
As I watched the dog intently sniff a piece of grass, I thought to myself, why don’t you try accepting that you are anxious and you can’t think your way out of anxiety. Try slowing everything down, be the dog for a few minutes; he seems to have this be in the now concept down. Inevitably when I am feeling anxious, it means I am minimizing feelings that I am having. I am usually upset about something my Monger tells me is stupid, or I should be over it. I know this. I know that is my pattern, and I also know that when I am anxious, the LAST thing I want to do is slow down and feel anything. I want to fix it. Ugh, I thought, ok, I will TRY to be the dog. I listened to the traffic in the distance and then heard a bird singing, and I concentrated on that sound. I felt the cold air on my skin and saw the sky changing as the sun came up. And I felt better. My brain stopped spinning, and I was present for the first time that morning.
Here is the truth. I have written about this before, feeling anxious, on a dog walk, slow down, feel better. I am sharing it again because it happened again but also because this is ongoing. This process is ongoing. And I hate that. I so want to be fixed. I want to write to you and share the 5 step process so you, too, would be permanently fixed! But the positive is that years ago, that anxiety that I felt that morning for an hour would have plagued my whole day and probably most of the next day. I would have let the anxiety run the show, which might have caused me to get angry at my husband for not being as productive as I am. Or I would have made up some drama with my brother because that was a safe place to put my anxious feelings. So even though my anxiety isn’t permanently fixed. I know how to work with my anxiety, slow everything and accept myself as is anxiety and all. And through that practice, life is better.