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“Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!”

“Go Away, I’m Busy”

“Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!”

“Go Away, I’m Busy”

Mom!

What?! I can’t take it anymore. What is it?!

That’s how I feel when my anxiety creeps in. My tendency to suppress emotions and uncomfortable thoughts as a means of self-preservation routinely results in the exact opposite– a full-on meltdown. It can be really hard to deal with emotions and unpleasant thoughts at the moment. These things don’t operate on my time or for my convenience, unfortunately. They creep in and lash out when they feel appropriate, regardless of my desire to “sit with my feelings.” However, just like with a child, whenever I am busy and they want attention, I don’t have to stop everything I’m doing to go play with them. Simply acknowledging them will usually suffice until I do have a moment to engage.

I recently thought of this metaphor for my anxiety after I let something my therapist and partner both told me to sink in: what happens when you try to silence your inner voice? It will just become louder. In essence, I had been ignoring/suppressing my feelings and thoughts so much that they needed to throw a full-blown tantrum to get my attention. My inner child thinks it’s protecting me when something feels off and familiar, so *queue anxiety*. Unfortunately, acknowledging things that bother me makes me extremely uncomfortable, so I tend to push them away and hope they won’t come back. Sadly, anxiety is not that easy to get rid of.

Since having that conversation, I’ve tried my best to acknowledge how I’m feeling or thinking whenever this occurs and it has actually helped me to feel a lot less anxious. While intrusive thoughts can be very uncomfortable and distressing, acknowledging them has allowed me to have some reprieve without them running back in full tantrum mode, thus far. In my case, however, this can be hard to control at times because it generally is not the actual thoughts that make me anxious but the implications of the thoughts that may send me spiraling. What does that mean? What am I doing? Is that wrong? Why did I think that? And with each additional thought, the spiral gets deeper.

Afraid of failure, humiliation, and judgment, I often overthink things that may potentially tarnish my “reputation.” Not that anyone actually cares, honestly, but the idea that they might is enough to make my chest tighten. I want to be good enough. But for who? That’s the answer that I find hard to find. On the surface, I don’t really care how people view me or what opinions they may have, but on a deeper people-pleasing inner-child level, that validation means a lot to me.  And, acknowledging that is somewhat difficult in it itself because it alters my own self-perception of who I thought I was. What does that mean? Spiral… Spiral…

When living life considering what others want or think, it leaves little room for what I want or think. Because I, apparently, have been so accustomed to considering the thoughts and emotions of others throughout my life, that process has become somewhat ingrained in my daily thinking. So much so, that it’s hard for me to identify when I’m even doing it. Through this process of listening to my inner child I am hoping to find the current me, a process which I am sure will be shocking to myself and others, but undoubtedly worth it in the end. One day I hope to tell her, “Hush, little baby. I’ve got it from here.” Q