Try Harder: Anxiety and the Wonderful Messiness of Being Alive
“And forget that nonsense about loving and
embracing all of your flaws. You don’t have to love the things that impair and
disrupt your life. You just have to see them as workable, and never just unique
to you. Everybody’s fucked and has a brilliance in them. Let yourself be good
and honest and committed to life and know that this is all you can do. Know
that it’s enough.”
—Beth McColl, How to Come Alive Again: A Guide to Killing Your Monsters
Lovely blog readers! Are you out there somewhere? Anybody?! Are you there, God? It’s her, Margaret! Are you there, anxiety? IT’S ME, JEFFREY!
*Britney Spears voice* It’s been awhile.
I’d love to say that the lack of new blog posts here has been because I’ve just been so delightfully busy in the last two months that I simply neglected this blog just because I had no time for it… but that’s not true. In the almost two months since my last post, let’s just say I could have been better. If I’m being honest, I’ve been in the bell jar (a.k.a. the bad place) for the last little while and shit has, once again, been hitting the fan with my mental health.
This year has been somewhat of a whirlwind for me and my mental health. At the beginning of the year, I started having a series of epiphanies surrounding me, my anxieties, and the weights that I’ve been carrying on my shoulders for as long as I can remember. Despite the fact that I had been in therapy for nearly three years before starting this blog, I had yet to reach a place where I felt like I was done with my anxiety and ready to start defining myself outside of it. And as much as that was scary, I felt ready. I felt ready to say enough is enough and to try, to the best of my abilities, to stop letting anxiety rule my life, boss me around, and convince me that I’ll never achieve or accomplish any of the things I want from life. Thus, I was ready to start calling out my anxiety for the liar that she is and always has been.
That’s where the whole idea for this blog came from—I was tired of curling up with bullshit that a vast majority of human beings go through when I could be doing something so much more productive with it: I could be sharing my experiences and putting feelings and anxieties into words so that, with time, they would start to control me less and less. And for awhile there, that did work. But just like so many other trials and tribulations when it comes to mental health, there are ebbs and flows, ups and downs—so I guess I was well overdue for a down period. But that’s just the thing. Even though I sit here writing and preaching these words, saying that there are ups and downs to everyone’s mental health, a small part of me still refuses to believe that. I’ve come to learn that I have what is known as an all-or-nothing pattern of thinking. Everything is perfect forever, or everything is terrible forever and won’t ever get better—there’s no in between. And while I’ve spent the better part of the last few years learning how to live in between and accept that life is uncertain and messy, it still doesn’t come naturally to me. This was another reason for my break from this blog.
Again, I’d like to say that I really just haven’t been doing well for the last two months and thus just haven’t had the energy to write any new blog posts, but that’s not true. I wrote two new posts at the end of October, merely for the sake of keeping the blog up to date, but never ended up posting them because it didn’t feel right. I didn’t believe in what I was writing. I also started scrolling through my previous posts, written when I was in such an enlightened and genuinely good headspace earlier this year, and I started thinking to myself, “You’re so full of it. Do you even believe any of these things? Or were you just writing until you ran out of motivational phrases to keep yourself numb?” This is another downside to being outspoken and open about your mental health struggles. We start to feel more confident being open about our struggles when we are in a good space, but we all lose track of the fact that nothing lasts forever—not bad spaces, and not good spaces, either. I started second guessing myself and feeling—even though I know I’m not—like a failure. I felt like I wasn’t practicing what I preach whatsoever. I had entered a bad space again, and was completely failing to follow any and all of my old advice—advice that I’d since given to countless people regarding their own mental health.
But then I allowed some time to pass, and I realized that I was in fact practicing what I preach. From day one of this blog, I’ve preached that life is messy and it gets easier when we figure out how to live in the mess. And for the last few months, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing—figuring out how to live in the mess, and messing up accordingly because nobody—not you, not me, not even your grandmother—knows what we’re doing. We figure it out and make it up as we go along. A big hurdle I faced earlier this year was leaving my part-time job of over two years, a job where I felt there were no further opportunities for growth or development of my own personal skills, and starting a new part-time job at a bakery: in customer service, a field I had never officially worked in and had long since avoided. In retrospect, this bakery was a very difficult and challenging environment and I know that I tried my very best to make it work, but after a few months, there was just no more hiding that it wasn’t working and it wasn’t the right fit for me. In September, with the start of a new school year, I shared on my Instagram how I suddenly started experiencing chest pains from anxiety—something, despite my very intense periods of anxiety in the past, I had never experienced before. That should have been my first warning sign that something was wrong, and even though I changed my school schedule to a different version that I thought would be better, it didn’t help. I ignored the red flags that I was taking a detour into another bad place, and only realized how much I’d failed to put myself first until I’d already fallen too deep into the bell jar.
But then I took a step back and realized that I had also been falling back into my old routine of just being too damn hard on myself. I stopped and realized that most of my feelings of anxiety were 100% justified. I’d been too caught up in trying to love and embrace all of my flaws in hopes that it would make me start magically overcoming them all overnight. It took the universe knocking me on my ass and showing me how drained and empty I felt that I don’t have to constantly be ripping off band-aids when the wounds underneath aren’t ready to heal yet. I’d gotten so used to telling my anxiety to go fuck itself that I forgot that sometimes we have to let anxiety do its thing and make us miserable before we can figure out how we’re going to grow from this. Sometimes we just have to ride out our feelings until we receive a sign that we’re ready to move on.
I’m not saying I’m necessarily ready to move on, or that I’m done riding out this new wave of anxiety. But I’ve also taken some time to reflect back on the person I was a year ago, and even two, three, four years ago, and observe how much I’ve grown and how far I’ve come since then with my anxiety and mental health. I left the new part-time job after putting in a fair six months and started another new part-time job, in an atmosphere where I feel like what I can do and what I can bring to the table is enough. That’s where 95% of my anxiety comes from: not feeling like enough, feeling like basic everyday human skills come so naturally to everyone else but me, and thinking that I’ll never learn or adapt. And I know these things aren’t true, but I’ve also figured out that my mind will feed me these lies no matter what I say in return. So sometimes we have to let our anxiety and the voices in our heads scream at us for a bit, let them get tired, and then ask them, “Are you about done? Because I’d like to get on with my life now.”
Despite it all, one misconception about mental health that always seems to prevail is that we’re not “trying hard enough.” First of all, what does that even mean? Second of all, we are all trying our very damn best. I know it might not look that way to the untrained eye, but we are. It’s hard, and sometimes we have to let ourselves feel the ugliness in order to start finding the beauty. However, while there might not be no such thing as not trying hard enough, there’s definitely such thing as “trying too hard,” and I know this firsthand. It’s a very slippery slope between “try harder” and “trying too hard.” There’s accepting that what you’re doing isn’t working, but that doesn’t mean you have to then try too hard to make that or something else work right away. You have to let the dead finish dying in order for new life to start growing in its place, and that takes time. And you have all the time in the world.
“Whenever I’m overwhelmed by feelings of shame about the way I am, I think about dinosaurs, who were all huge, freaky-looking lizards. They didn’t care about anything. If I went back in time to the dinosaur days, would any of them care that I sometimes feel really depressed and anxious? No. They would eat me immediately. And I just think that’s so beautiful.”
—Beth McColl, How to Come Alive Again: A Guide to Killing Your Monsters
(Recommended listening for this essay: “Thursday” by Jess Glynne, “Learn to Let Go” by Kesha, “Forget” by Marina, “Anxiety” by Julia Michaels & Selena Gomez, and “Girl in the Mirror” by Bebe Rexha)
Follow It's Not That Deep on Instagram — @areyouthereanxiety — and listen to my playlist of mental health songs on Spotify and Apple Music
Lovely blog readers! Are you out there somewhere? Anybody?! Are you there, God? It’s her, Margaret! Are you there, anxiety? IT’S ME, JEFFREY!
*Britney Spears voice* It’s been awhile.
I’d love to say that the lack of new blog posts here has been because I’ve just been so delightfully busy in the last two months that I simply neglected this blog just because I had no time for it… but that’s not true. In the almost two months since my last post, let’s just say I could have been better. If I’m being honest, I’ve been in the bell jar (a.k.a. the bad place) for the last little while and shit has, once again, been hitting the fan with my mental health.
This year has been somewhat of a whirlwind for me and my mental health. At the beginning of the year, I started having a series of epiphanies surrounding me, my anxieties, and the weights that I’ve been carrying on my shoulders for as long as I can remember. Despite the fact that I had been in therapy for nearly three years before starting this blog, I had yet to reach a place where I felt like I was done with my anxiety and ready to start defining myself outside of it. And as much as that was scary, I felt ready. I felt ready to say enough is enough and to try, to the best of my abilities, to stop letting anxiety rule my life, boss me around, and convince me that I’ll never achieve or accomplish any of the things I want from life. Thus, I was ready to start calling out my anxiety for the liar that she is and always has been.
That’s where the whole idea for this blog came from—I was tired of curling up with bullshit that a vast majority of human beings go through when I could be doing something so much more productive with it: I could be sharing my experiences and putting feelings and anxieties into words so that, with time, they would start to control me less and less. And for awhile there, that did work. But just like so many other trials and tribulations when it comes to mental health, there are ebbs and flows, ups and downs—so I guess I was well overdue for a down period. But that’s just the thing. Even though I sit here writing and preaching these words, saying that there are ups and downs to everyone’s mental health, a small part of me still refuses to believe that. I’ve come to learn that I have what is known as an all-or-nothing pattern of thinking. Everything is perfect forever, or everything is terrible forever and won’t ever get better—there’s no in between. And while I’ve spent the better part of the last few years learning how to live in between and accept that life is uncertain and messy, it still doesn’t come naturally to me. This was another reason for my break from this blog.
Again, I’d like to say that I really just haven’t been doing well for the last two months and thus just haven’t had the energy to write any new blog posts, but that’s not true. I wrote two new posts at the end of October, merely for the sake of keeping the blog up to date, but never ended up posting them because it didn’t feel right. I didn’t believe in what I was writing. I also started scrolling through my previous posts, written when I was in such an enlightened and genuinely good headspace earlier this year, and I started thinking to myself, “You’re so full of it. Do you even believe any of these things? Or were you just writing until you ran out of motivational phrases to keep yourself numb?” This is another downside to being outspoken and open about your mental health struggles. We start to feel more confident being open about our struggles when we are in a good space, but we all lose track of the fact that nothing lasts forever—not bad spaces, and not good spaces, either. I started second guessing myself and feeling—even though I know I’m not—like a failure. I felt like I wasn’t practicing what I preach whatsoever. I had entered a bad space again, and was completely failing to follow any and all of my old advice—advice that I’d since given to countless people regarding their own mental health.
But then I allowed some time to pass, and I realized that I was in fact practicing what I preach. From day one of this blog, I’ve preached that life is messy and it gets easier when we figure out how to live in the mess. And for the last few months, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing—figuring out how to live in the mess, and messing up accordingly because nobody—not you, not me, not even your grandmother—knows what we’re doing. We figure it out and make it up as we go along. A big hurdle I faced earlier this year was leaving my part-time job of over two years, a job where I felt there were no further opportunities for growth or development of my own personal skills, and starting a new part-time job at a bakery: in customer service, a field I had never officially worked in and had long since avoided. In retrospect, this bakery was a very difficult and challenging environment and I know that I tried my very best to make it work, but after a few months, there was just no more hiding that it wasn’t working and it wasn’t the right fit for me. In September, with the start of a new school year, I shared on my Instagram how I suddenly started experiencing chest pains from anxiety—something, despite my very intense periods of anxiety in the past, I had never experienced before. That should have been my first warning sign that something was wrong, and even though I changed my school schedule to a different version that I thought would be better, it didn’t help. I ignored the red flags that I was taking a detour into another bad place, and only realized how much I’d failed to put myself first until I’d already fallen too deep into the bell jar.
But then I took a step back and realized that I had also been falling back into my old routine of just being too damn hard on myself. I stopped and realized that most of my feelings of anxiety were 100% justified. I’d been too caught up in trying to love and embrace all of my flaws in hopes that it would make me start magically overcoming them all overnight. It took the universe knocking me on my ass and showing me how drained and empty I felt that I don’t have to constantly be ripping off band-aids when the wounds underneath aren’t ready to heal yet. I’d gotten so used to telling my anxiety to go fuck itself that I forgot that sometimes we have to let anxiety do its thing and make us miserable before we can figure out how we’re going to grow from this. Sometimes we just have to ride out our feelings until we receive a sign that we’re ready to move on.
I’m not saying I’m necessarily ready to move on, or that I’m done riding out this new wave of anxiety. But I’ve also taken some time to reflect back on the person I was a year ago, and even two, three, four years ago, and observe how much I’ve grown and how far I’ve come since then with my anxiety and mental health. I left the new part-time job after putting in a fair six months and started another new part-time job, in an atmosphere where I feel like what I can do and what I can bring to the table is enough. That’s where 95% of my anxiety comes from: not feeling like enough, feeling like basic everyday human skills come so naturally to everyone else but me, and thinking that I’ll never learn or adapt. And I know these things aren’t true, but I’ve also figured out that my mind will feed me these lies no matter what I say in return. So sometimes we have to let our anxiety and the voices in our heads scream at us for a bit, let them get tired, and then ask them, “Are you about done? Because I’d like to get on with my life now.”
Despite it all, one misconception about mental health that always seems to prevail is that we’re not “trying hard enough.” First of all, what does that even mean? Second of all, we are all trying our very damn best. I know it might not look that way to the untrained eye, but we are. It’s hard, and sometimes we have to let ourselves feel the ugliness in order to start finding the beauty. However, while there might not be no such thing as not trying hard enough, there’s definitely such thing as “trying too hard,” and I know this firsthand. It’s a very slippery slope between “try harder” and “trying too hard.” There’s accepting that what you’re doing isn’t working, but that doesn’t mean you have to then try too hard to make that or something else work right away. You have to let the dead finish dying in order for new life to start growing in its place, and that takes time. And you have all the time in the world.
 |
| *Meghan Trainor voice* I'M A BADASS WOMAN! |
“Whenever I’m overwhelmed by feelings of shame about the way I am, I think about dinosaurs, who were all huge, freaky-looking lizards. They didn’t care about anything. If I went back in time to the dinosaur days, would any of them care that I sometimes feel really depressed and anxious? No. They would eat me immediately. And I just think that’s so beautiful.”
—Beth McColl, How to Come Alive Again: A Guide to Killing Your Monsters
(Recommended listening for this essay: “Thursday” by Jess Glynne, “Learn to Let Go” by Kesha, “Forget” by Marina, “Anxiety” by Julia Michaels & Selena Gomez, and “Girl in the Mirror” by Bebe Rexha)
Follow It's Not That Deep on Instagram — @areyouthereanxiety — and listen to my playlist of mental health songs on Spotify and Apple Music
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