I personally find that once you have anxiety it’s best to just accept it and move on, I’ve been battling it since July 10 of 2020, I remember the day clearly and probably always will, ya you gotta take some pills and learn your triggers. I live in North Idaho and the winters are brutal in the sense that there is nothing to do, for me if I’m constantly doing something I’m fine, but when I am trying to rest on a day off sometime it just isn’t going to happen and just like Aaron I too play the drums and simply distracting your mind is an easy way for anxiety to not exist, I am also a dirtbike enduro competitive racer and I find if you burn up excess adrenaline then I seem to be fine for days or even months sometimes, I only take pills in the winter when I’m stuck at home with nothing to do. It’s almost like your body and mind is telling you to get up and do something, anything productive.
Now learning your triggers, yes sometimes you have the feeling of you can’t breathe and sometimes no control over yourself every once in a great while and it does come out of nowhere and never has a reason, it just pops up and it’s there, when it happens it’s sudden and generally doesn’t last long. I have always been nervous of crowded spaces, carnivals, malls, movie theaters, ect. And once I developed anxiety it just got worse so I try to stray away from places like that naturally, but sometimes you have to just do it and hope for the best. Generally the outcome of facing your fears is rewarding in the end.
As a competitive racer I’m forced to face many fears such as crossing logs, huge rocks, tractor tires, ridiculous hill climbs, and try to make it through rivers and creeks, ect. End of the story it’s hard, that’s the point. I find it’s a great way to not only face your fear of hurting yourself (which does/can happen) but your also challenging your fear, looking it dead in the eye and showing yourself that you do in fact have control, sometimes of course your brain decides to turn into a bowl of mash potatoes and you irrationally have a panic attack for no reason but once you can identify the symptoms and understand what they are, you soon begin to find to use it to your advantage.
What I mean by this is yes it still sucks you have to take some pills and be uncomfortable for a few days till they kick in, but while racing I welcome it, your already breathing heavy, your already exhausted from 60 miles of track throwing a 240lb bike around and now you have a ton of obstacles in your way, when it kicks in you don’t feel pain, I’ve fallen off my bike going 35-40mph got back up and didn’t feel anything cuz I was focused on breathing through an attack, you think clearly and quickly, when an attack happens cuz all you want to do is “make it to safety” which for me is the finish line, does it still suck? Yep but it does have some advantages once you simply accept one, your fine and not going to die, and two your stuck with it so learn to live with it, again you gotta take some pills every so often when the anxiety gets bad, so what, once you learn to live with it and accept it’s never going away the better off you will be. However I will say I understand what living with a mental disorder is and I can confidently say, don’t let it take control of you, if you let it, it absolutely will, stay active and face your fear head on, then and only then can you truly feel in control and most days free from fear, fear is the reason anxiety exists, like Aaron said it was handed down by our ancestors and was given to us by god himself to protect you from danger, after all danger is what activates anxiety and anxiety is what keeps you alive. You can’t control it but you can learn to embrace it.
