“I realize my anxiety is acting as some kind of motivation in my life. It is helping me to go on.” If this resonates with you, then this self-inquiry exercise may be valuable to you.
Self-Observation on my anxiety
- I am in a constant state of mild panic.
- I am tired.
- I cannot exactly phrase what is bothering me; The best I can say is that I am in a state of fear.
- When I can concentrate a little then I realize I am afraid of losing my safety.
- I cannot tell exactly what I feel.
- I am confused. This is really threatening; these racing thoughts.
- The worst is this confusion. It is making me want to speed up and do more more more, get more more more. Like as if it is feeding itself.
- It feels as if it will never end.
- I have a much harder time to do self-observation on my anxiety than on other things in my life because it is a whirlpool. I am so easily pulled back into it.
Chain of thoughts coming when I can go deeper
- My anxiety is turning my life upside down.
- I cannot do what I once set out for myself.
- Wait. Is this necessarily a bad thing?
- I want to get out of my anxiety but at the same time, I also want to stay in it and solve it. So that it never comes back.
- Right now, I just want to give up. I am fed up and exhausted.
- Another strange observation: My anxiety acts like some sort of motivation for me.
- If I stop caring, my anxiety is pretty much gone. I don’t want to go on anymore because I find that what I have been doing before is not what I truly want.
- Strangely, I find that my anxiety is making me even more self-conscious.
The above self-observation exercise is just one possible flow of associations. It is meant to stimulate you, and by no means is it implied that it is about you.
