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.
Tomorrow is a new day, Full of new promises, When you rush through the day, Tomorrow is always there to say, Don't worry tomorrow it can be done, Tomorrow we can try again. Tomorrow's exciting promise, Every morning when you wake. A bit more time to finish today. More time to play They say Don't leave till tomorrow, Why you can do today. Sometimes tomorrow seems the same. Tomorrow is so different from today. No joy before you settle down, Tomorrow you'll still feel like you'll drown. What if tomorrow never came? What if today was the end. Would you regret the things you put off? Would you ponder if that phonecall, That text, that knock on the door, Shouldn't have been tomorrow's chore? Would you beg for another tomorrow? Would you mourn your yesterday. Today someone needs you. That phone call can't wait. A chat, a cuddle, a hand to hold, Responding may mean more than gold. So don't put it off, don't delay. Someone...
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