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this was me up until ~27. i still occasionally have a bit of it. ymmv, but in my journey my understanding has been, the way out is through. you can't banish the gut reaction. rather you gotta find a way to be deeply immersed in the feeling "I am safe, I am loved, I am cared for" https://t.co/7zw70kEoHc
you gotta focus on the feeling you want to be feeling, not on the feeling you want to banish. in fact, the act of trying to banish a feeling, itself creates more of the feeling "something must be very wrong, that banishment is required", and guess where that leads
part of it can seem really weird and silly, like literally rehearsing alternate interpretations, and revisiting past memories https://t.co/cAJWg6ay00
a lot of my anxiety came via school. i used to be stressed all the time as a student. and so one day i decided to go to the bus interchange as an adult and just sit there and breathe and remind myself, I am safe, I am free. permanent ~20% stress reduction https://t.co/oO8Dgx3dQZ
thought I’d capture a bit of footage to look at next time. from ages 10 to 21, this was the bus interchange I used the most, and spent the most time at. it’s deeply intertwined with many of my memories. It features in my dreams sometimes. https://t.co/DsffjBvhzM
and just for some visual evidence of what that stress reduction looks like in muscular tension in the face, particularly around the eyes etc. when i was in the depth of it, I couldn't actually even discern the tension. but now i see it in so many others https://t.co/ToZvwrNVs5
anyway if you wanna read 300 pages of me going on and on on in circles about this stuff i have a pdf. hopefully an epub before christmas (free DLC) https://t.co/SPIIAqAtgD
some of the specific things are like - make a list of the ppl you know, and spend more time around those you've connected well with - make a list of media you've loved in the past– movies, songs, etc– and revisit them - attend to your life as if it matters, even if its as a bit
actually its really hard to properly contextualize everything in a few tweets lol hence the 300 page book. because you can go too far with the "as if it matters" thing and then be like "oh god everything matters so much": https://t.co/cLpQFc4h1N
