The Quest for Inner Balance: Find Your Peace Within Stress and Anxiety

I've always been anxious—yea.. my WHOLE life.
I've been masking my worries—yea.. my ENTIRE life!

Yet, I always had a positive mindset despite my (made-up) worries.
That's my mask. That's where I hid my worries.

So unless I mention I am anxious (or you know me personally), you would never guess.
On the surface, I look all cool, calm, and collected—that anxiously confident mask.

That's the upside of being neurodivergent: a lifetime of masking pays off.
Tho, I know I can only mask to others.. Never to myself...

Then, my anxiety skyrocketed to new heights as I started to unmask my neurodivergence:

"What will they think of me?"
"How will I even explain this?"
"Who can even get how I think?"

As such, it became evident that to unmask my Dyslexia and ADHD, I was bound to also have to confront my worries (and anxieties).

And in all honesty, I'm still figuring things out.. 
I think we never fully can get "rid" of anxiety..

It's human nature!
And our anxiety evolves over time alongside us.

That said, through careful self-exploration, we can make better sense of it and how it affects us.. and in that, there is a HUGE power!

Key Obstacles: Unraveling The Dilemmas

So, what's anxiety in reality?
That's a complex question to answer..

Anxiety is not this one single thing we can point to, but more a constellation of elements making it all up.

That said, I hold that it boils down to three major elements:

1. Physiological responses

2. Neural responses

3. Your responses to them

It is inside these boundaries that anxiety lives and where your worries exist.
Let's begin untangling it further with concrete examples.

Starting distinguishing stress from anxiety:

Stress is inevitable. Stress is constant..
Tho, it gets a bad rep (or is misunderstood).

Like there would be no gravity with the stress from the gravitational pull.
So, stress creates entropy, which promotes movement and growth.

By contrast, anxiety is a mindset.

It is the (mental) labels we attach to the stress around us.
It is the story and meaning we weave to make sense of our (stressful) experiences.

In other words..
The laws of physics tell us that whether we are conscious of it (or not), we are constantly under some stress.

The laws of psychology tell us that we can reframe our stress in a plethora of facets.

Anxiety is rooted in fear, and fear is an emotion:

Emotions are tough to describe with words (the best we got are approximate).

Trying to describe them will always fall short of our felt reality.

Tho, that is precisely what we do when we justify our stress (and fear) through anxiety.

We understand (read as feel) our emotions, but we cannot fully capture their essence through words—that goes as much to ourselves as to others.

Physiological response and the brain axis:

If we believe it, our body makes it so!
Our brain and body are in constant communication.

When one is overwhelmed, the other feels the burden too.
We've all felt beyond stress, and all we want to do is sleep (or eat).

That's the brain and body aligning with one another.
Where our mindset influences our body state.

In this way, the narrative woven during stress influences our mindset, subsequently impacting our physiological responses.

Dealing with Doubts: Proactive Approaches

It's all too easy to tell ourselves that "everything" is fine (and sometimes it is).
Still, it is vital to be realistic with ourselves and our reality.
We must discern what is from what is not!

Here are a few examples:

"I can think my way out of anxiety—it's just stress."
Really? That's just fighting fire with more fire..

Think about it: 
To lower anxiety, one is better off accepting stress.. Not trying to outsmart it!

"I am generally happy. Anxiety isn't my thing."
One can be happy and have anxiety (I am a great example).

Think about it: 
Yea.. having a positive (read as happy) mindset is a great asset! Tho, it will never stop (stressful) stuff from happening around you.

"I can't change my body's response.. Why even bother?"

Maybe you won't change your body's response, but a mindset reframing is possible!

Think about it: 
Fear and excitement have very similar physiological responses (e.g., elevated heart rate, increased blood pressure, dilation of pupils, etc.).

That's all up to you to decide how you wish to perceive your stress.. your reality.

Unlocking Benefits: Amplifying Advantages

So why bother and scratch at something that could be ignored until that last dying breath?

Understanding yourself better:

If there is one thing in life worth pursuing, it's self-exploration
That is the most tangible thing you (and only you) can explore!

By understanding how you respond to stress, you can better understand how anxiety manifests (in you) and how to better respond to it.

Expand your emotional vocabulary (know thyself and others):

By exploring what anxiety means to you, you essentially develop more comprehensive models of your anxiety.

This model allows you to speak about your emotions with more ease.

This model informs you about your own model and can serve as a basis to better understand how people around you deal with their anxiety/emotions.

Creating novel ways of (re)framing your mindset for optimal quality of experience:

If you've been anxious most (if not all) of your life, you can expect this to be a BIG process to undertake.

By starting now (little by little), you can improve and re-iterate as you go (as you learn more about yourself and your emotions).

Guided Steps: Turning Knowledge into Action

Clearly, anxiety is not something that disappears at the snap of fingers.
Still, it is possible to understand how it manifests for us.

There are no specific "steps" to take other than to self-explore.

By cultivating an environment where we can observe our responses (judgement-free), we, in turn, begin a much larger process of understanding ourselves, our anxieties, and the world around us.

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