I’d like to talk
about anxiety.
Today was another day of going through this anxiety.
So what is it and where does it come from? Because to me, it seems totally
pointless, and completely gets in the way of any living that
one could potentially do. Worrying
about this, or worrying
about that, and it seems like it just comes out of nowhere, like a thought
pops through, and all of a sudden I’m in anxiety.
It really feels like a thorn in my side. It prevents me from living here.
So what is anxiety?
It's something that always has existed within myself, just biding it’s time and waiting
to emerge. I know
this because I see that it doesn’t just magically pop out of thin air. The
ingredients are there within me and in time
it is just triggered. So on the surface, anxiety
may seem like this pointless thing that exists as a thorn in your side, but I
see it now as a guide or
compass that can show me exactly where I am still accepting
and allowing points of separation
to exist within myself.
Because what anxiety
shows me in myself is where I have judged
myself, for example, as inferior and that I have misplaced my trust into
something else that is outside of myself instead of just trusting
myself as who
I am. An example of this, would be like ‘believing you need to get drunk to
talk to others’, or believing that you need to memorize exactly what to say in the
presentation you’re giving
to others, instead of trusting yourself that you will be able to express
yourself effectively in the moment as who you are. Another cause of anxiety is
in the anticipation
of the outcome. Worrying
about whether or not it will be good
or bad,
which I see is pointless, because I find that the outcome will be the same or
have more consequence
by worrying
about it, so why worry?
We worry because we don’t trust ourselves,
and so it becomes a viscous cycle.
For example, in the
last couple of days, anxiety has had a grip on me. The trigger in these cases
were meetings that I thought
‘held importance’. I really wanted to impress upon some other people that I was
a good
enough employee to be on the team I was on and maybe ready for a promotion. The
first meeting, I had to give a presentation and the people in the room
consisted of people that I judge
to be of more value
than me, because they are my managers or managers from other departments and
are higher up on the corporate ladder, so to speak. They have many more years
of experience,
so I judge myself automatically to be inferior to these people. I label these
people as being more
critical and more watchful of what I say, where as with someone that I see as
having less knowledge,
I can say something that may not be entirely accurate and it will slide by
without a hint of criticism towards it. For those times,
when I have seen another say something not entirely correct, I immediately
challenge them on it and usually correct them as a their superior
(ie. Put them in their place – back to their inferior level as I judge it). And
I fear this criticism
or correction from another person because I don’t want to be put back in my
place. I don't want to be inferior to them.
So where I had
misplaced my trust outside of myself, in this circumstance, instead of trusting
myself, is through knowledge, and being able to defend my opinions from any
criticism. I automatically through that I would be grilled for certain things,
so I started having these fake internal conversations
with myself and my boss's
in my head on certain points. I didn't trust myself enough to just speak my
perspective to help
us all get to an understanding, I felt that I needed to go over it in my mind,
which is kind of the dumbest thing to do , because you end
up spending hours and hours practicing to be defensive most likely on topics
that probably won't even come to the surface. These internal conversations,
usually stem from fear,
and when one is in fear,
one can definitely not trust oneself.
Then comes the expectations
of the outcome, where I only would see it as ‘Good’ if I feel that others are seeing
me in a positive
valuable light.
Like ‘I respect
this guy, because he seems smart and knowledgable’ or ‘I like him because he
seems like a great asset to the company – he is special’. Because it would kill
me if the presentation was terrible, and others were disappointed and thought
that I wasted their time and
didn’t see something special. Not only that, but if all of those managers
thought that I sucked collectively, then I believe that next thing you know,
I’m out on the curb without a job. Then what? And that’s what scares me. What
the hell would I do? This is all that I know.
The strangest thing
is that my biggest fear
about doing presentations, is simply just going into fear and being
judged for
it, because I see that when I go into fear, I get
light headed, I can’t think, the
words just wont come out of your mouth. Like stage fright, you can just be frozen in time,
and to me that is the scariest thing. I don’t like that feeling
of fear and being that vulnerable to judgment,
because going into that kind of fear, I feel opens the door for judgments
from others of inferiority.
I see it in myself when I judge others for not being ‘sharp’ or smart, and up
until now, I didn’t actually consider that they may actually be smart, but just
let fear and anxiety take over instead. So, it’s ironic that having a fear for
not appearing to be smart (even though you may be smart), can actually give the
perception
to others that you are not smart. What that is saying is that the fear is then
actually manifested into the reality.
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