All posts filed under: Living with Anxiety

Talking About Dating Anxiety + Love on GROUP Podcast

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When Rebecca Lee Douglas first reached out to me to ask if she could interview me for her podcast, GROUP, my knee-jerk reaction was to politely say “thank you, but no thank you.” I sometimes don’t even answer the phone when it’s people I love, what makes you think I wana jump on a call with a stranger? Actually, I don’t even think I responded to her first email. Rebecca Lee Douglas is the founder and producer of the podcast GROUP, which focuses on mental health. She brings experts in and discusses important mental health issues in a relatable, empathetic, and often humorous way. There are episodes on thought distortions, Seasonal Affective Disorder, and even emotional support animals. She’s amazing. Buzzfeed recently named GROUP as one of the 27 Podcasts You Need to Start Listening To In 2018. In other words: Yas Qween!! So when she said she wanted to talk with me for a mini-Valentine’s Day episode my inner-voice-slash-confidence-that-I’m-still-working-on-everyday was like “nah, she doesn’t actually want to talk to me.” But guys, Rebecca Lee Douglas is …

Wait, is this a tension headache? WHY

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As a lifelong holder of the”maybe you could chill the fuck out a bit” badge I know a thing or two about headaches. I had them on an almost daily basis as a child until one day a dentist looked at my teeth and was like “hey, where are your canine teeth?” (*spoiler alert: I’d ground them away in my sleep like a hobo chewing on roots in the woods trying to talk to birds*). Since then I’ve slept with a mouth guard every night of my life even while camping, even with boyfriends, even while making out sometimes cuz nothing says sexy like excessive saliva. The headaches got better and even though I still get them more frequently than I’d like, they are manageable. But something has happened in the past few weeks. I’ve welcomed a new melody to my catalog of headaches. At first I thought it was the usual, good-old-fashioned almost-migraine headache. But something was different. It was like I was wearing an invisible baseball hat. Made for babies. Baby ants. My scalp …

10 Ways to Calm Your Internal Mama Bear

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The other night I got mad. Real mad. I came across something online, something someone said about a person I know, and the mama bear in me raged. I wanted to act. I wanted to chase someone up a tree. I had my response and was ready to throw it like a pine cone. Anger is an emotion we all have and we constantly are learning to navigate. I grew up around several individuals who had tempers and therefore I associate anger and being upset as “bad” emotions. I’m still learning how to be better at being mad. It is natural for things to upset us. It is okay for things to upset us. It’s how we handle them that makes the difference. Anxiety is particularly good at stirring up our anger. We are prone to negative thought patterns, obsessive worry, and increased irritability. If you struggle with anxiety odds are you also find yourself struggling with angry emotions from time to time. But there are ways to help yourself through these moments… 1. Acknowledge …

Table for Four: Ditching the judging, critical, killjoy

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I have this analogy that every time you’re on a date with someone there are actually four people sitting at that table. No, I’m not Cybil, just hear me out. So naturally, all us blessed with higher than normal anxiety have a constantly running inner dialogue. Hopefully you’re getting better at limiting just how much that inner voice is criticizing you, but let’s be honest usually it’s pointing out ways you’re making a fool of yourself. So while we’re going about our own daily lives, waiting in line at Starbucks, rushing to NOT miss the bus, we’re living in a reality with dual selves. There’s the outward appearance we show to the world, one we painstakingly work to try and make appear as ‘cool’ and normal as possible and then the inner, mental, persona who is the one planning and working it’s butt off to keep ‘outward you’ from making a total fool of yourself. To give examples, appearance you is the one walking down the street, cool, calm, collected and totally confident. At the …