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“Am I breathing right?”
tends to help get things going.
If it doesn’t work, and you actually calm your breathing instead, try prefacing it with an “Oh no!”, and if that doesn’t work still, try framing it in the negative, with more urgent alarm…
“Oh no! Is my breathing wrong?!”
Then you can really get underway with anxiety, moving on to things like “something bad is going to happen”.
With a little practice, you can build up to full blown panic attacks in no time.
Don’t bother. You haven’t got what it takes.
• Do your friends really like you, or are they just being nice out of pity?
• Did you leave the stove on?
• Really, did you leave it on?
• Hey, so this climate change thing looks pretty scary, huh? Probably not a good thing to leave your progeny to suffer through.
• On an unrelated note, when was your last period again?
• Fuck, now you’re gonna have to go to the drug store, pick up some tests and holy shit what are the abortion cutoffs in your state, again?
• What if you have to find an in-network provider for an appointment, call them, and face the possibility that they’re not taking new patients?
• Oh, that’s an itchy scalp, isn’t it? Better spend the next 30 minutes recording a zoomed in video as you look through each hair section and check for lice.
• Can humans get fleas?
• What if you have to fumigate? You can’t afford that.
• Your car’s sounding weird, don’t you think? What if it just had a catastrophic malfunction on the highway and you die in a horrific crash?
• I mean, at least then you won’t have to worry about the appointments, might be a relief.
I mean this in the best way, fuck you for making me think about each of these in detail just as I was going to bed.
Didn’t have to read it.
I’m intentionally steering my eyes away from all the suggestions here, lol.
Bro my brain has been fucking me my whole life, get in line
I’ll go out on a limb with this one. I really think that anxiety is related to anger. There’s anger from sadness and there’s anger from feeling powerless. Feeling powerless doesn’t necessarily stem from physical aspects; it can be from self restraint and compliance.
I don’t. I don’t think there’s a direct line from helplessness to anger. I think it’s just fear of things you cannot control, being overwhelmed with the logistics that accompany a response to any and every possible disaster or inconvenience, and a lifelong weariness built on your own constant vigilance against anything that might marginally worsen your stability and comfort. It’s worry. Constant worry, and your own forecasted model of whatever consequences await should you stop worrying.
If you personally experience anger as a coping mechanism to difficult feelings, I think there’s an emotional regulation issue you need to address and work on. If you’re angry because you feel powerless, it’s probably because you feel more comfortable being angry and use it to avoid the discomfort of feeling small, and that’s your way of reclaiming power. That’s not anxiety, that’s a frightening quality for others to have to deal with, and your pattern of thought shows a willingness to offload the blame for your aggression on external factors. Anyway, I hope you find a way to deal with that, if that’s how you process anxiety.
I’ll have to think about what you wrote, thank you, it might actually help me. Working as a government contractor (not the shit kind you see on tv) was nothing compared to working in education. I’m probably angry at myself because I couldn’t do anything when my students came to me for help.
She told me that he touched her in the wrong place; bringing it up and being changed to a different group pissed me off.
I failed as an educator. You can look at other posts I’ve made, education is hell.
I’ve got some friends in education and I definitely don’t envy them at all. I’m sorry you had to go through that. Good people, I think, feel it is their duty and sometimes even their purpose to protect children. I feel that imperative too, and can empathize with how upsetting it is to know there’s a harmed child you cannot help. There’s evil, despicable people everywhere and I personally cannot fathom how they live with themselves doing what they do. The sad reality is they often are protected from the consequences of their actions, and I definitely know that righteous anger and that desire for some extrajudicial punishment for people like that.
Maybe you couldn’t save her. But you tried. Maybe you’ll have another kid and won’t be able to save them either. But you just keep trying, doing your best, and you hope that one day you’ll be able to save at least one. It only takes one to know you were somebody’s angel, and that there was a reason for you to be where you were when you were. Give yourself some grace, friend.
“Is that a fart, or a shart?”
If you aren’t stressed, then you’re forgetting something important and only falling behind. Better drink some coffee, smoke a cigarette and pace around until you realize what you should be stressing over
It’s been a while since you mowed the lawn, but it rained recently so you’re not sure if the grass too wet to mow again.
The unstoppable passing of time
My body feels fractionally different, am I dying?
Do they like me?
Sleep apnea is a good starter. The idea is to look it up when you wake in the night and obsess over the idea that something may be wrong with you.
Instead of specific worries, try focusing only on your negative experiences and memories. Then, you will worry naturally as you go about daily life being constantly tortured by the intrusive thoughts of all those emotionally painful moments and awkward mistakes.
If you stop worrying you might accidentally fart in a meeting at work again! Who needs to pay attention to the road when you could be ruminating on just how much you overshared with that new group of friends you like so much? Sure they were all gracious and supportive, but that one glance from that one guy who probably doesn’t like you probably means you blew it. Did you? Who knows! Better think about some more.
Let the philosophy of anxiety inhabit your soul, and pretty soon you won’t be able to stop it even when you want to! And just remember, that you’re probably tolerated at best, so you deserve this! Best of luck with your new anxious life, and keep those shoulders tight.
You can start with climate change and work your way to all the other shit stemming from it
I was gonna go with “Do people really like me or only pretend to like me?” but you went right to pro-tier.
Replay cringe conversations and social blunders in your head from years ago.
Constantly wonder if you put your underwear on backwards this morning.
Question whether you are having a heart attack, or cancer, or serious organ failure, or parkinsons, or MS, or a fatal case of covid, or ebola, or a stroke, or going blind … all the time.
Know that AI will replace you sometime this year and you are too old to get another job of any sort.
That aircraft you hear overhead is not some passenger jet, but bombers about to try shock and awe.
That rumbling isn’t a truck driving by, but a hidden fault line about to unleash the mother of all earthquakes.
Ghosts are real.
That last one made me look around the room. I need to get out of this comments section.
If you are a straight male: Am I growing breasts?
If you are female: Am I somehow pregnant?
If you have pets: are they just sleeping or dead?
Are the walls here thick enough to stop bullets?
If you in the US: Will ICE round me up?
A good starter worry is that you left the stove on.
