It Swells

My chest tightens, struggling to expand as my lungs labor to fill themselves with air in a consistent manner. My eyelids flutter, never fully closing as the tears well behind them. The world spins, darkens as it seems to close in around me. My ears fill with the deafening sound of silence as the shroud of nothingness covers me. I spiral, and the anxiety swells like a typhoon quickly overcoming a shore. 

Managing my anxiety has been a battle I have fought since I was able to name it, able to attribute the sinking feeling I often carried around with me. At times, it feels as if a pinball is bouncing off my ribcage - tinkling from one side to the other and then back again. Other times, it feels like the above; a mind-numbing, suffocating experience. Any given day is a grab bag - will I wake up with a feeling of doom and dread; will I feel OK and then something disturb my peace; will I feel OK all day and never have a worry in the world? Reasonably, any of these options are real ... expected. Unreasonably, was the previous control I let these situations hold over me without the understanding I control my own narrative and have the power to navigate life courageously. 

I have gained this understanding over the last few years - through open conversations with friends, peers, mentors, therapists - I am not broken, but some of my thinking patterns (bad brain wiring as some of us refer to it), are broken, and that's OK. I was fortunate enough in college to have the opportunity to be exposed to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and give a more specific name to my anxiety - Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). This helped me to understand the intrusive thoughts would come, but allowing them to overtake my life was unhealthy and hurtful to me. CBT did not "fix" everything, but it gave me the foundation I would need in life to make the necessary changes to be a healthier, happier version of myself. 

A little over a year ago, I started to mediate - generally in the mornings, sometimes in critical moments of crisis. Through consistency, I have been able to take the techniques of "noting", or recognizing a "thought" versus a "feeling", and identify when my intrusive thoughts are hindering me. Meditating has given me a safe space to sit with these intrusive thoughts and attempt to identify where they came from or why they are plaguing me in those critical moments. It, too, is not a "fix", but it has continued to build on the foundation CBT gave me when navigating the harder times in life.

My anxiety is something I understand I will deal with for the rest of my life, but these tools (and a strong support system) help me to distance myself from the negative impacts my anxiety has had in my life. Each day is a chance to take control and live courageously, to take chances and have faith in something beyond myself, and to understand being the healthiest, happiest version of myself is not an unobtainable goal. 

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