How To Tell The Universe That You Don't Want To Feel Like Shit Anymore

Every choice we make is a powerful form of communication.

I had a bit of a rough week.

Traveling, family health issues, and creative self-doubt started piling up and my nervous system responded with anxiety, insomnia, and fatigue. Lying in bed, heart racing, I couldn’t stop the slideshow of missteps, fears, and questions from playing on repeat in my brain.

I found myself in that paralyzed state of anxious nothing. I wasn’t able to move the way I wanted or communicate with my people about how I was feeling. I was frozen but running marathons in my mind. Do you know the feeling?

When I get this way, the first thing I do is panic. I know, not very evolved coming from someone who has built a platform on the peace and freedom of sobriety. Hear me out.

The panic is just the natural reaction I have when things get wonky, it lasts anywhere from thirty minutes to a week or two. I forget everything I’ve learned, momentarily, and believe that all is lost, that I’m just a broken person who’s missing some major piece of anatomy, malfunctioning and beyond repair.

In panic mode, I make contradictory choices to my desired outcome. I reach for fast food, skip workouts, and doom scroll until 3 am. I put off relatively easy tasks and decline calls from the people I love because I’ve decided I just can’t handle it at the moment. I start to believe that I’ll never achieve my writing goals and I should probably just get a job as a used car saleswoman, at least I could use my acting skills.

Worrying becomes the activity of the day and I get that shit done.

No one who’s living in panic mode actually wants to be there. That’s why it’s so frustrating trying to explain anxiety or depression to someone who hasn’t experienced it (though, I think all humans do whether they call it by those names or not). We do not wish to be held hostage by these film reels of worst case scenarios and character defects. Sensitive folks, artists, creative souls like us, are especially susceptible to these bouts of panic. We feel everything. Even the feelings that aren’t ours to hold or fix or process end up in our care.

So, how do I turn it around? I remember that every single choice I’m making is communicating what I want to happen next.