After Anxiety
Today, I had a really great day; a perfect day. Yet tonight, I am sitting here with a weighted blanket on hoping that this feeling of panic will pass. I should have been in bed hours ago but I am still awake, unable to sleep; unable to shake this feeling that is making my heart race and my body uneasy.
I’ve learned over the years that this is a pattern that emerges after something big - a big meeting, presentation, party - something that requires more of my social battery. What’s frustrating is that it doesn’t matter how the event or thing goes. It can go great! I can crush it on stage in front of hundreds of people but that night, without fail, I will get this feeling that I have affectionately coined “After Anxiety.”
Like a dependable best friend, my After Anxiety always shows up. Sometimes it comes with replaying every conversation or interaction I had: Dear God, please let them forget I said that, that was so awkward, why did I say that. Sometimes, it’s no specific conversation or embarrassing moment, just a crippling feeling of stress. I start to question things that have no business being questioned; things my mind is sure about but my anatomy is somehow having second thoughts. It’s like my body knows that today I tried to challenge myself a bit by putting myself out there; it knows and it doesn’t like it.
I started this post on the night I was feeling all this in hopes that writing it down would help get it out of me - a way of surrendering it. When I started it was just for me, but I’m choosing to post it today for you, for the people out there who sometimes feel the same way too. I want you to know that the version you see of people out in the world is a narrow view of what it actually takes to succeed.
Real growth takes surrendering - and maybe weighted blankets, therapy, or medication. Maybe all of the above and some. I hope it will be a relief to know that you can have big goals and accomplish great things, while still working through the complicated parts of you. There might be some people out there who can just charge through their obstacles with a do or die attitude and come out the other end unscathed, but that’s not me. So if it’s not you either, know you are not alone.
