Dear apple-slice:

You’ve been suffering from elevated anxiety for a long time, sometimes more than other times (having read this thread and earlier in the year threads). You mentioned earlier that you grew up in a chaotic and toxic household. A childhood like that does not disappear when we get older, it leaves us anxious, as if we are still living it. And maybe you do, maybe you live with your parents, still living your childhood.

Heightened anxiety is like a heavy box of rocks that makes every task very difficult. It is like climbing a hill with that box of rocks- the hill feels like a mountain and you get very tired quickly. So you look at the top of the hill (which looks like a very tall mountain), and being so tired, you get overwhelmed, thinking something like: how am I going to make it all the way up there! I am so tired!!

“I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything”, being so  tired you do what tired people (and tired animals) do: you rest. You don’t do or do very little of the following: studying for exams, doing your chores, going to class, and even going outside and talking to people.

Instead, you are resting, but you are feeling ashamed and guilty (“loath myself”) about resting, so  it is not such a good rest. feeling badly about resting, you “keep stuffing.. face with food.. binge watch tv shows” to find relief of the shame, guilt and self loathing.

What to  do: remove the shame, guilt and self loathing and rest for a few hours, truly rest. Understand that you are really tired, so tired you don’t even do the easy, fun things like going outside and talking to people. This means that the problem is not that you are lazy, but that you are understandably tired because you’ve been carrying that heavy box of rocks for too long.

After resting some, plan your daily life in such a way, that every hour or  so you look at that box you are carrying and remove a rock of two. Anxiety operates in such a way that you don’t want to be carrying a box, but there it is anyway. You  remove all the rocks but later, there are the rocks again, in that box. So you have to be attentive, or mindful during the day and keep noticing and removing rocks.

As you  plan your every day, make it as easy as possible for you while accomplishing the most important things.

anita