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Anxiety:An unanswered message.

If I had to sum up anxiety in one scenario an unanswered call/text/email is probably the easiest situation to use. I phone you. You don't answer. You don't call back. Depending on who you are I could convince myself you are dead on the motorway husband) or that I've upset you (friend). I create all sorts of scenarios in my mind for reasons you haven't text. I start to panic. My heart races, I can't concentrate. I become obsessed with checking for replied. I plan your funeral because in my mind I believe you have died. Sometimes I cry because I believe I have upset a friend. In those minutes, hours and days I create all sorts of things which sometimes I can rationalise, sometimes not. Sometimes your delay in replying provides me with evidence towards a negative core belief. For example, you don't reply. I believe I've upset you. This provides evidence that I am, as I feared, a horrible person and I've just proved it. Similarly sometimes I don't reply. I try to use these times as evidence that I am busy, so other people might be. This can help rationalise my response to the unanswered message. Sometimes an unanswered text from me is I have nothing I believe of any worth to say. Or I don't want to burden you. Or I don't want to lie about things being OK so instead hide away. I try not to let my obsessive thoughts, my anxiety affect my behaviour. I brush off these things pretending to be rational, to be normal. Sometimes it's too hard and it will spill out, usually in self destructive obsessions that only hurt me. Alienating people with my neediness. This is anxiety.
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