What I’m Doing Along With Freaking Out
I love those lists that people create of things you can do to stop yourself from spiraling into anxiety. None of them work for me, but I like to do them along with spiraling into anxiety because I think it makes the anxiety a little easier to manage.
The first is doing a brain dump of everything making me anxious, from the large amorphous things (country/world falling apart) to the more personalized real problems to the more personalized less real problems. For example, there are things I allow onto the list that aren’t really problems. I know they’re not problems, and the list knows they’re not problems. But I figure I’m the only person seeing the list, so I can write them down and take them out of my brain.
This task is helpful for two reasons. The first is that by taking these worries out of my brain, I can tell myself that I can forget about them for a few minutes because I will not forget the list. It’s written down. The second is that I can look back on past lists and see which fears came true and which ones did not.
There were 9 things on the list I wrote on January 3. 7 have been completely resolved. 1 is undecided but is leaning in a good direction. 1 is still happening, but I currently feel okay about it. That’s pretty good, right? A little over two months later, 78% of the things making my heart pound are behind me, and 100% are no longer a worry or making it onto a list in mid-March.
The other thing I’m going to do is try to clear my to-do list. It has become unmanageable, and we were only triaging the time-sensitive tasks. So now I throw a few items that I know we can tackle that week in an email for Josh and one for myself, and we leave it in our inbox and take care of one or two tasks per day. It feels good to get it back down to one page this month.
Maybe next month, we’ll be at a half page. Fingers crossed.
2 comments
This is so relatable! I love writing lists and will often do a big brain dump when I’m feeling really anxious. I also love coming across old lists. I can see what used to worry me and think about what happened. (Did I do the task? Is it still weighing on me? Or is it irrelevant now?) It’s helped me learn that there will always be stress but the what causes stress changes.
Also, like you, my To Do list felt like too much so I concentrated on doing stuff in January and February that I’d been putting off for years. It wasn’t a ton of fun, but now some important home repairs and personal administrative tasks have been done. And it feels good! I’ve let myself relax a little more in March… Yay lists! Haha <3
I totally agree with writing down things that are worrying you, so you can tell your brain it doesn’t need to stress about it trying to remember it. It worked really well for me in times of high stress. I’m hoping it will again in the future.
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