Day 20 Change for calm, openness, presence & how to & worries

[ChronicVince]

I'd like to change :
- Less being in a rush with an internal pressure of fear and excitment, more appreciating my "free time" in a calm spirit
- Knowing how to decide better what I do, be confident of my choice as a good choice, and knowing how to be satisfied with it afterwards.

To make this change :
I try to remember "prioritize yourself" & "feel your emotions" & "what thoughts makes me like this" more and more. Concretely, I try to apply this to several activities and retry my hardest activities (around working)
- Going for lunch with ex-workmates
- Going to a profesionnal Meetup
- Maybe going to a professional conference of that as a volunteer

Any help welcome :
- I noticed, since I'm thinking of these steps, anxiety and fear came back. I can't really feel it like other emotions because it stays. I try to don't add second fear to not fatten it, but it remains in background. So I try at least to let it at the background and no more, and to float with my anxiety. I also try to say to me "that's ok, you're safe here and now". A kind of pressure remains, and it seems to me I'm too much in my head, because I regulary try to feel it as an emotion to let it go, but it remains. How to deal with this ?
- And my wife keep asking me : "If you were so fast to recover your foot pain after reading a book, why you don't just apply the same pattern to (work related) anxiety ?" What should I reply to her ?

 

[Cactusflower]

Anxiety or “more anxiety” often comes when pain symptoms leave. Perhaps you say you don’t really feel the fear of these social goals is because it isn’t fear - it’s anxiety.
Fear is the emotion. Anxiety is more of a feeling or a state. We accept and feel emotions which pass quickly in the body but like you said, feelings and states can stick around. From everything I’ve read and try practicing is to simply accept that these things make you anxious. Don’t try to talk yourself out or reason with the anxiety, just notice it is there. What you do not want to do is give the anxiety power over you. The author Claire Weekes is so helpful for anxiety. You simply say “I am anxious today” and let it go. Your job is to not get caught up in the story around anxiety. When you worry -just re-focus on what you were doing.
This book Claire Weekes Help And Hope For Your Nerves is translated into French.

 

[ChronicVince]

Thank you so much @Cactusflower, I read several times your answer these days. It gave me the clarity I was missing. Indeed it is fear I feel. To be honest, I was not sure Fear was an emotion. Maybe because I mixed up with anxiety, and also because I dit this very good exercice : https://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Day_L (Day L)
That succeeds to really make me feel and aware of my emotions, maybe for the first time of my life! But there's no Fear (only Sadness, Rage, Guilt, Hapiness). So I tried to recognized only them...
Maybe we could say that Fear is the emotion repressed, and Anxiety is the TMS physical symptoms ?

 

[Cactusflower]

Yes, TMS is an expression of anxiety -of tension in the body and mind.
Any emotion can be repressed. Any one or maybe a combination, Fear often covers up shame, or grief. Most times there are layers. Perhaps you can be happy with others, but you are never much happy for yourself -this often happens when we are perfectionists and never satisfied with our own self. All it takes is to observe these things, all the different ways we may feel something or not. The most important thing is to do this with a lightness, a curiosity and no blaming the self or trying to look too hard. Just notice sometimes.

 

[ChronicVince]

Oh yes I can be easily happier with my friends than with myself alone !