my anxious mind

I feel like such a failure.

Having an anxiety disorder is often like living in a real-life episode of Groundhog’s Day. You get back up, anxiety is reset to your abnormally high baseline and you proceed through the day. By the end of the day, the anxiety could be very low, almost normal. Doesn’t matter. You’ll go to sleep and wake up starting at the beginning all over again and again and again.

I am in Vegas. Attending a conference at the Venetian. It’s busy. It’s very intensely busy. If I never had to go back to the casino level, I’d be happy. The smells, the sounds, the visuals, it’s all too much for my little brain. I feel overwhelmed, I feel like my brain is short circuiting. Getting from check-in to my room feels like running an ultra marathon. And now I’m exhausted. I just want to hide in the room.

With that said, I’ve ventured out, not much but enough to test myself a bit and I’ve done okay — but I prefer not to be in this hectic, overwhelming environment.

Saturday morning. One of the patterns I have recognized is that of early morning anxiety. It seems most mornings when I wake, it isn’t feeling relaxed and refreshed, it’s feeling scared. And how I react tends to frame the rest of the day. Do I give into the fear and spiral? Or do I take a deep breath, let the anxiety settle, and then go on with my day?

Made it to LA. Spent most of the day yesterday worried about the flight, then the flight was delayed for almost an hour due to weather, having to deice, but once in the air, the anxiety melted away. Landed and hit a Mexican street market for dinner, it was really nice. A bit loud and crowded for me, some of the “supermarket syndrome” started to kick in but I just sat with it — and enjoyed some amazing tacos :)

One other note on being in LA, consistently, my last 5 trips here, I feel so much calmer, relaxed, and my resting heart rate drops by 10-15 BPM. Not sure what to make of that.