It manifests differently in everyone. With me it expresses itself in weird, non-obvious ways. For example, for the longest time I thought I never had any anxiety at all, because I’m not an overtly anxious person. But that wasn’t exactly the case – instead I tend to push things down deep – I mean really deep. I would experience anxiety and not even know it. Fucking clueless. Being smart and really understanding yourself are two different things.
See, when I get anxious, I’ll begin to worry and perseverate inappropriately about something. It’s usually something that warrants worrying, but I’ll begin to obsess over it. I mean really obsess – to the point where I begin to dream about the fucking thing. Not good dreams, but not exactly nightmares either. Somewhere in the middle. Troubling. The sign of a mind in turmoil, trying to process something for which there is no understanding.
Meditation definitely helps, but even that becomes problematic, because it’s really hard to let go when your mind is racing a hundred miles an hour.
Time ultimately puts things into perspective. It’s just unfortunate that that perspective usually involves some new reality, and the new reality isn’t good – no, it’s always worse than the old reality.
Welcome to life. There’s no handbook for this shit.