photo credit: glitter feet
As anxiety sufferers we all understand by now what constitutes an anxiety symptom. It could be palpitations, chest pain, dizziness, or more thought based symptoms like racing or disturbing thoughts. In my case I have experienced both, but interestingly rarely have I experienced both at the same time.
This only came up because lately I’ve noticed that if I’m sucked in by speeding or negative thoughts I usually will not encounter physical anxiety symptoms like hot flashes for example.
The only thing that I can summarize from this is that when anxious thoughts, especially the “automatic” variety, come into the mind they completely preoccupy our entire being. As if our bodies don’t have time for palpitations when fully engaged in anxious mental sparing.
On the other hand, when I’m dealing with a physical concern my anxious thoughts are present but on a completely different level, solely focused on how the physical symptom is about to kill me, or at least how I imagine it’s gonna kill me.
So there I am, sometimes enveloped by the body and other times by the mind. Aside from being a gift from hell, it does bring up an interesting question. Is not being anxious more about redirecting our attention, at least partly, from anxiety with enough focus and energy to make the anxiety not matter? In other words, if we were able to occupy the mind with something else as intense but less negative, could we achieve more anxiety free days?
Or, is it more likely that only anxiety can bring enough energy to bare to make us forget about this or that aspect of our condition? Is your anxiety as two faced as mine? I suppose more than anything when someone is chronically anxious they cling to anything they perceive as potentially dangerous or scary. And of course there is that pesky thing called genetics and life experience that could be the prominent source of our anguish.
In this way the two faces of anxiety are really just different sides of the exact same coin. You might ask do I prefer mental anxiety versus phyiscal anxiety? Honestly I’d rather have a piece of palpitation pie anyday, but I hate’m both just the same.
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As anxiety sufferers we all understand by now what constitutes an anxiety symptom. It could be palpitations, chest pain, dizziness, or more thought based symptoms like racing or disturbing thoughts. In my case I have experienced both, but interestingly rarely have I experienced both at the same time.
This only came up because lately I’ve noticed that if I’m sucked in by speeding or negative thoughts I usually will not encounter physical anxiety symptoms like hot flashes for example.
The only thing that I can summarize from this is that when anxious thoughts, especially the “automatic” variety, come into the mind they completely preoccupy our entire being. As if our bodies don’t have time for palpitations when fully engaged in anxious mental sparing.
On the other hand, when I’m dealing with a physical concern my anxious thoughts are present but on a completely different level, solely focused on how the physical symptom is about to kill me, or at least how I imagine it’s gonna kill me.
So there I am, sometimes enveloped by the body and other times by the mind. Aside from being a gift from hell, it does bring up an interesting question. Is not being anxious more about redirecting our attention, at least partly, from anxiety with enough focus and energy to make the anxiety not matter? In other words, if we were able to occupy the mind with something else as intense but less negative, could we achieve more anxiety free days?
Or, is it more likely that only anxiety can bring enough energy to bare to make us forget about this or that aspect of our condition? Is your anxiety as two faced as mine? I suppose more than anything when someone is chronically anxious they cling to anything they perceive as potentially dangerous or scary. And of course there is that pesky thing called genetics and life experience that could be the prominent source of our anguish.
In this way the two faces of anxiety are really just different sides of the exact same coin. You might ask do I prefer mental anxiety versus phyiscal anxiety? Honestly I’d rather have a piece of palpitation pie anyday, but I hate’m both just the same.