An Anxious Girl In A Scary World

I’m not a natural born leader. Some people have the ability to lead in their blood. My best friend, for example, is a natural born leader. She has a strong personality and people follow her willingly without her having to try.  For me, it’s a learned skill. One that I’m still learning in fact and one that I’m not the best at. Having the anxiety tied in with the fact that I also have a low self esteem and low sense of self worth make leading even harder. If I don’t believe in myself how can I expect others to believe in me?  There are days at work where I’d have to make a tough call and act as a manger and not as just a coworker or a friend.  When it comes to “calling someone out” I chicken out and I’ll lean on a superior to make that tough call for me.  I knew that if I really wanted to succeed at being a good manager I’d have to deal with those situations myself. The reason I would always pass the job onto a superior is because I didn’t have the confide...

Making new friends is tough. Especially for someone who has such crippling anxiety. These last couple of months I’ve been enduring some of the worse anxiety I’ve had in a while.  One of my best friends is getting married and I am one of 6 bridesmaids. Which is all fine and dandy except for the fact that I have to interact with all of them on many an occasion.  I’ve had to endure dress fittings, brunches, movie & t-shirt decorating parties, long distance drives, and bridal showers.  These things are not out of the ordinary for a bridesmaid but to me it’s almost been torture.  I’ve been so self conscious about not only my body, but about how I talk, what my laugh sounds like, what my makeup looks like, how I’m acting. I’m constantly worrying about whether I’m talking too loudly or laughing too obnoxiously. I’m worried about saying the wrong thing or oversharing. Every time I’m with the girls I’m in this constant state of anxiety.  I will say ...

Good morning everyone! Yesterday morning and this morning I was having a struggle. I felt as if I had hit this roadblock in my life and I wasn't sure how to move forward. I say all the time that in order for us to move forward that we have to do whatever work is necessary otherwise we'll be stuck at the same point in our lives for the rest of our lives. I have to be honest with you guys... I've been slacking pretty hard at doing the work that's needed for me to move forward but I've hit the point today where I'm like, something's gotta give. I cannot sit around and complain anymore. I can't keep doing the same thing day in and day out and expect anything to move in the direction I want it to. I know we all get into ruts and it's hard to climb out of them when you feel that low but I've consciously made the decision that I can't be there any more. I need to get out. I wasn't really sure where to start and I was struggling with wh...

There must be something I’m not learning from all of these relationships or something that I’m not accepting about these relationships because I keep finding myself in the same ones over and over again. Today’s reading in The Language of Letting Go was about surrender. It was about overcoming our current circumstance and how the circumstance we are in right now holds a valuable lesson for us even if we don’t know what that lesson is now. The reading also says, “We must go through it until we learn, until we accept, until we become grateful, until we are set free.” So, until I learn my lesson I have a feeling that I’m going to end up in this endless loop of damaged no good men. I also have a feeling that the lessons I must learn are how to put up boundaries and self-advocate. I know that those are the two things that I struggle with not only in my relationships but in my everyday life. Another lesson could be that I can’t change these men no matter how hard I try or how much I wa...

I just heard of Kate Spades passing. Did you know she suffered from depression? I didn’t. (For those of you who don’t know, Kate Spade was a designer.) She was found in her apartment in NY, an apparent suicide. It just goes to show that mental disorders can affect anyone. It doesn’t matter what your skin color is, what your religion is, what your gender is. I also read an article this morning about how someone had made a post about how we as a society don’t talk about mental illness like we would any other illness and how we don’t treat mental illness like we treat those who have an “actual disease” and it got me thinking about how absolutely true that is. From what I’ve seen these days people around my age (early twenties) acknowledge it more so than some of the older generations. We’ve definitely taken a step forwards in some regards because mental illness is showing up more in movies and TV shows like 13 Reasons Why but again, it’s not really talked about. Only when...

Good Morning! I apologize once again for not writing in a while, I've been dealing with a family emergency. Although, I've come to the conclusion that I've actually not been dealing with the recent situation in the most healthy way I could. I've reverted to the same tactics I usually do when going through some sort of crisis. It's been a pretty difficult time for the entire family and we've all been trying to be strong for one another and hold ourselves together... Perhaps I should offer some back story. My grandfather, who lives with me, my mom and dad, had a massive stroke about two weeks ago. He has been in the hospital trying to recover (and still is). He hasn't gotten better and he also hasn't gotten worse. But it's extremely hard to see him looking so sickly and old. The condition is a lot worse than I will explain here but needless to say, he isn't doing well and at this point we're just trying to make him as comfortable as p...

Good Morning! Let's make some moves, shall we!? How else are you supposed to make progress? That's right, you don't. Simple as that. Whether it be regarding the anxiety, co-dependency, getting a job, going to school, you cannot move forward unless you start taking action. If you don't take the necessary steps to move forward you aren't going to make any progress. You'll still be in the same place you are. Think of it as a plateau. You aren't moving backwards but you also aren't moving forwards either. For a while all I was doing was complaining about where I was in my life. I was complaining about my job and my crap relationship and how my life wasn't going anywhere. I was going to my therapist week after week talking about the same thing over and over again. It wasn't until I was a couple of weeks in that she had brought it to my attention that that's all I was doing. Complaining. Complaining about my problems wasn't going to fix...