Source: eva ep 6
good sleep last night. today im probably getting some of the pc parts for my new build so im washing my hair because i look like peridot steven universe. i wrote some stuff beneath the break about how my struggle with anxiety is going. it is positive, but the way i talk about it is highly personal so my metaphors might be unclear. at worst, detrimental to your own struggle. so, yea discretion advised.
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i’m beginning to feel that my brain is finally realizing that there’s a bug with the Danger Meter. generally i felt anxiety the following way:
tense body, adrenaline rush -> find any chronologically adjacent sense-data (in either direction) to blame for the anxiety -> vigilance mode activated -> goto 1
there’s obviously a couple of problems here. first of all, the experience of anxiety preceding its justification. for normies or people with more well adjusted brains, this might not be that much of an issue, but because it happens so often in my head, i end up with things like “feeling like im about to die because i heard an almost inaudible noise”, which are not really worth pursuing / preparing for the way my anxiety wants me to.
more importantly, it is a loop without any obvious exit conditions and if let unchecked it will consume my entire energy reserves. this doesn’t happen often and hasn’t happened in a while. the reason why it’s such a nasty spiral is that the less energy you have the fewer resources you have to scrutinize some of the nonsensical stuff coming from the anxiety.
however, with the help of a DBT workbook and some breathing techniques, this process has begun to diverge:
tense body, adrenaline rush -> look for sense-data to correlate with the anxiety -> oh wait the danger meter is always at 100, there’s no immediate cause -> [resume being distracted by adhd]
NOTABLY, i am not any less anxious now. i still experience anxiety constantly BUT i am not as distressed by it or get hooked into its logic. like it’s there, but i’m not interacting with it, kinda like twitter or my mom.
what i want to avoid is interacting with my anxiety in its own terms. it is useless as a danger meter in the first place because it gives me false positives constantly. so now it is just kind of a glitched out element of my HUD. which is fine i guess, i just wish i could be relaxed for longer periods at a time.
