You know that thing where you can turn on “read receipts” so that people can see when you’ve read their messages? Or how Facebook messenger and Instagram DMs do that automatically?
You know that thing where you jump through all kinds of finger hoops to NOT click on a message so that the person that sent it won’t see that you’ve read it?
Wait. You don’t know that thing? Or you do? Do you care if someone knows when you read their messages? Do you not care? Do you care sometimes and not others? Does it depend on the context? What if the message is from your boss, or a customer? What if the message is from your partner, your mom, or your BFF? Do you even care at all about this?
I’m using this silly little thing to illustrate how sometimes it’s not a silly little thing. Then sometimes it is. Again. Things change. Our perceptions change. Our motivations change. Contexts change. Our reactions and our internal experiences change from hour to hour and day to day. This is how things work.
Everybody is different. Everything is different. All. The. Time.
Why does this matter in the context of anxiety recovery?
It matters because when struggling and desperate for a way out, we often plot a course that we visualize as straight, predictable, fast, and smooth. I get why we do this, but it’s just not realistic because nothing in life works that way. Everything around us is changing all the time. We’re changing all the time. There are no straight lines and no truly smooth paths to be had.
I believe that this is true in literally every aspect of life from the smallest thing to the largest. Most of the time we are blissfully unaware of the bumps, turns, changes, and rough edges. They are small and un-noticeable or they are larger and we feel them, but we just don’t care about them for whatever reason. But in all cases, and this is really important, WE HANDLE THEM. We ride over the bumps. We brush across the sharp edges. We steer through the turns. We … YOU … do that all day long every day of your life.
I’ve written THREE books on anxiety and anxiety recovery. Find out more about them here.
Now apply this to the recovery process. How is it different? Because you care more? Because you WANT smoothness more in that context? That’s fine. You can care. You can want what you want. There is no crime there. But caring and wanting are not connected to capability in any way. I can really WANT to play my guitar like Stevie Ray Vaughn, and I can really CARE that I can’t do that, but does that erase my ability to play my guitar at all? Of course it doesn’t. I can still play. I do it all the time, even when it doesn’t look or feel the way I want it to.
When you want to ask WHY you feel anxious again today, remember that you navigate through variations all the time. When you want to be told AGAIN that you will get better because today just feels harder than yesterday, remember that life is in a constant state of ebb and flow. When you’ve been feeling good for three days but today you’re following your thoughts again and you’re sure this means that you are back to square one, consider how much change and unpredictability you’ve handled in every other aspect of your life.
When you want to beat yourself up because you thought you’d gotten over something, but you find yourself ruminating about it again, think about read receipts and how sometimes you care about them and sometimes you don’t.
Everyone is different. Everything is different. All. The. Time.
This is the universe you live in, and you mostly handle it.
You can handle variations, changes, turns, surprises, and unpredictability in recovery too. I’m sure that you can.
Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” - Rumi
186. Everybody Is Different. Everything Is Different. All. The. Time.