Chronic Anxiety from Negative Thoughts
Right before my thirtieth birthday, I quit my career, partly to avoid getting fired and partly because I sucked at it. I had no boyfriend, close friends, or even a pet goldfish. My life felt like swimming in wet cement. The little progress I made was hard-fought, and ultimately I sank every time. What was wrong with me? How could I fix it? I was a failure who wasn’t good at anything. I kept trying to find the thing that would make me whole, that would tape me back together. I was getting tired of mending myself.
I lost one of my parents when I was a kid, and it was a stain that wouldn’t wash out no matter what I did. I tried to get out of my pain by helping other people, moving away from home, and talking in therapy, but still something in me could not thrive. I shuffled around the truths I had no vocabulary to communicate, the things I was sure were too awful for even a therapist not to censure. Eventually, I successfully repressed them, no longer recalling the trauma again and again.
Anxiety was the residue that glinted on the surface above the trauma. Everything made me anxious. Being around people. Going anywhere. Doing anything but stuffing my face with pizza and alcohol in front of the TV made my thoughts race and my heart beat like a hummingbird.
What I felt I needed was accountability, someone to help me tease out what I wanted to do with my life and hold me accountable to make those things happen. If I made progress, I wouldn’t feel so crappy about myself anymore. After bumbling along by myself for a few years, I started working with a life coach, sure that deadlines and encouragement could fix what was wrong with me. I just needed a friendly push.
I was expecting external changes, but something started changing inside as I worked with my coach. I noticed that my thinking was different, more positive, and I began questioning my beliefs about myself. Maybe I wasn’t such a piece of shit after all. The less I believed I was terrible the more confidence I had to make external changes.
I was curious about becoming a life coach myself, though I knew that if I wanted to be a successful coach, I had to do more work on myself. While deadlines and accountability were helping, I was still hiding my core wounds. The pandemic and personal upheaval left nowhere for me to hide anymore. I’d worked with my coach for a year already, and was willing to take the risk to be partially vulnerable with her. I could tear back a corner of myself and share the abridged version. The more she affirmed I had nothing to be ashamed of the more I could rip myself open. I began to believe that there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with me. All the anxiety that debilitated me was lifting. I wasn’t afraid to try things again and stick with them because I no longer had a mean voice in my head saying what an idiot I was.
My thirties have been a process of finally becoming my authentic real self. I don’t have paralyzing anxiety anymore just doing everyday things— most of the time! I’m nice to myself and believe that I deserve a happy life. Bit by bit I’m healing. Becoming real.
You can become real, too. The next time you’re overcome with anxiety because of a negative thought, ask yourself: What am I getting from being self-critical? We don’t do anything that doesn’t have a benefit for us. To protect ourselves from harm, to avoid pain, or to meet a core need like safety. So rather than spiraling down into anxiety when you have the negative thought, try your best to pause and ask yourself neutrally, What am I getting from this? This is the first step toward healing. Neutral self-interrogation of our thoughts. It’s hard, but try not to judge yourself for having the thought while you’re doing your self-interrogation. Approach with curiosity and compassion, like you would a friend who keeps having the same painful thought. It may be helpful to journal about it. Here are some journal prompts that could be helpful:
Where did this thought come from?
How do I feel in my body when I have this thought?
If I were talking to a younger version of myself who was having this thought, what would I, as my adult self, say or do?
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