How I made peace with the dragon

Self-healing my anxiety

Sitting on the couch, staring through space, I could feel my anxiety rising. I knew I had to do something about it.

The thing with anxiety (mine at least) is that it is like a dragon. The moment I sit down to relax, thinking I am going to simply observe the world pass by, the dragon appears. It scoffs at me, laughs at me, points fingers at me. It blows flames onto my mind and tells me that I am wasting my life. I keep trying to dismiss it, but I can never find a good retort. So, it ends up winning. And I end up panicking.

Just like this time.

In a mild panic, I looked around. There was essentially nothing of importance that I needed to do at the time. I was still on vacation from work. Household chores had all been done. I was simply having an after-dinner lounge around the living room. My husband and mother-in-law were in the same room, looking out through the window just like me. They were content. I was not.

At the bidding of ‘the dragon’, I simply had to do ‘something’. Quickly, I picked up the tablet lying on the coffee table. Twitter notifications welcomed me into the online world. I noticed a tweet from the communications department of my organization. This is what it said:

There was something about the word combination “Do what you love” that piqued my interest. The words stretched themselves out towards me.

I thought about what I was doing in that moment. Was I doing what I loved doing? Sitting on the couch, staring into space? Not bad, I would say. Was there something I loved to do more than that? Of course. To write!

I put down the tablet, got up and padded down to the basement. Mind you, this was the hardest part — doing something about how I was feeling, instead of just having this nagging feeling to ‘do something’,

My writing desk awaited me. Pen or keyboard? As a symbolic ode to my digital source of inspiration that day, I opted for the keyboard.

The dragon huffed and puffed for a bit. Then it tiptoed out.