What makes you anxious?

Your Journal Prompts This Week:

In what circumstances or situations do I tend to experience anxiety?

What are some clues in body and mind that tell me I'm anxious, and how do I respond to those clues?

What helps to ground me in anxious moments?

What would my anxiety look like if it was a cartoon character, and how would I interact with it?

You might notice I'm a day late with my prompts this week, but I still wanted to send them. (Better late than never?) The truth is, unexpected life events and anxiety got the best of me yesterday.

Every now and then, we stay at my sister's house to watch her elderly cat when she's traveling. Sunday night, we arrived to a very hungry cat who promptly ate and started throwing up (not unusual for his age and condition, but still unsettling when he can't keep much down), and then Monday I had a stressful day due to a number of factors, one of the them being my mom going to the ER for high blood pressure. 

All of these things turned out OK and everyone is fine. But while it was all happening, my anxiety, per usual, had me three steps ahead, planning for a number of worst case scenarios. And whenever this happens, I kick myself afterward for letting anxiety take over and drain my energy.

In college, I once saw a cartoon from Natalie Dee on Facebook of a frazzled girl wearing a cape, and it said, "Anxiety Girl: Able to jump to the worst conclusion in a single bound!" Yep, that's me!

That little cartoon stuck with me, especially through my years of therapy for anxiety, where we worked on me easing up on that "superpower." But as much as I'd like to believe that years of therapy, meditation, and practicing yoga gave me the power to stop my anxiety from ever showing its face again, that's just not the reality. I can't in fact be superhuman and rid myself of it entirely, but I can continue to learn to manage it better or with greater ease. The only way to learn that is to allow myself to experience it and be kind to myself when it shows up.

So today, I am choosing to acknowledge my anxiety and examine not only what I can do to self-soothe, but what I can do to bring greater acceptance to it. I might not stop it from arriving, but maybe I can start with not feeling so disappointed in myself or guilty after experiencing it. 

How do you see your anxiety pop up in your life? What's your relationship with it? Explore it more with the journal prompts above.

With much love & gratitude,
Marcy

P.S. We just wrapped up the first season of Soulpreneur Sundays. Catch up on all 10 episodes now on Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube. If you've listened, we'd love to hear your feedback!

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