So, I’m dealing with lots of anxiety lately. About money, the future, hitting rock bottom, whatever. But the thing is, I’m not in a position to be anxious about these things. I have a decent paying job with an unlimited contract. I have an appartment, a loving gf, I’m healthy and even if shit hits the fan, my family would happily help me.
Still, I get like panic attacks when I think about some stuff. The fear of my car breaking down, for example, makes me feel like dying, despite being able to buy a new one without problems.
My anxiety feels misplaced. When I walk to my job (because even that’s a luxury I have), I walk past homeless people sleeping on porches, I walk past addicts shooting up etc. and I think ti myself: ‘they are so much worse off, What do I worry about?’.
Years ago I was trapped in a life of crime with very little perspective, and even then I didn’t feel anxious. Now that I have monumentally changed my life around, I worry. It makes no sense to me.
Has anyone else felt this way before? Or ar you still having issues like this? How did/do you deal with it?
I’m sorry to hear that. It wasn’t my comment, was it? I’d have to have upset you.
I’ve got a pile of climate change books that I’m trying to work through. The problem is, it’s depressing af. I can read for a few weeks but then I need time off. Sometimes a day or two will work. Other times I need a month or more.
You do a lot of great research and share it with us but some of the topics are a bit grim. Would it be worth taking a break for you to recover if it’s making you feel that way? I wouldn’t want you to stop posting but if you need a break, you’ve got to look after yourself.
No, it was nothing that anybody here commented. I have a shitty hippocampus, and resultingly I regularly obsess over my unpleasant experiences even when they stopped being relevant years ago. I am sure that anybody who’s been reading my comments for about a year can guess which personal matter has been agitating me again. Sometimes it makes me want to avoid others as much as possible, so I stay inside a lot.
Occasionally I even consider trying something antisocial, but the potential consequences make me reluctant. The worst thing that I have done to complete strangers within the last five years was deliberately ignoring them when they say ‘hi’ to me. I haven’t made any rude gestures or yelled ‘fuck off’ at them, but it is mildly tempting.
As for the grim topics, at the risk of sounding counterintuitive I have to say that they don’t devastate me emotionally. They can be moderately depressing, but being so far removed from the experiences, they just don’t traumatize me like some of my personal experiences do.