Today was a good day. I'm noticing that I have a lot more courage inside me and this is allowing me to go into situations that make me feel uncomfortable no matter what is on my mind or going on physically.
Today I had to step out of the house to run some errands and I was feeling very anxious prior to stepping out of the house. I couldn't really understand why I was anxious at home. I was feeling very hot inside my home to the point of sweating a bit and my mind was also racing. I believe my mind was racing because I did have a lot of errands to run and I was procrastinating, I was able to control this state of mind by focusing on my breathing and releasing tension. I also came to the conclusion that I was probably hot because the heat was on and it wasn't that cold outside and, on top of that, I was wearing a sweater. I was able to adjust my thinking by being aware of the 10 cognitive distortions and by following some of these steps to untwist my thinking.
I was still feeling pretty anxious as I was running my errands and I felt it the worse when I had to go to Staples to buy some batteries. As I walked into the store I was feeling really hot and I was sweating a lot. As I was looking around to see if someone was noticing I stopped myself and said, "You know these problems are not going to go away if you let your thoughts, physical sensations, or behaviour feed the anxiety. You're making progress and these uncomfortable thoughts and sensations are not going to kill you. It will pass like it has in the past." I immediately stopped looking around to see if anyone was noticing and again focused on what I was there to buy. I was still pretty sweaty but once I stopped the anxious behaviour, the anxious thoughts soon followed. As the anxiety went down I wasn't too concerned if people saw me sweating besides, it happens, people sweat.
My anxiety at this point was about a 50, down from about an 80 out of 100. The fact that I was still feeling hot and could feel myself sweating was still causing some anxiety but at least it wasn't as bad as when I came into the store. As I was looking for the batteries I saw the ones I was looking for but these batteries were rechargeable. I couldn't find the price so I went to purchase them anyways. I was convinced that they weren't going to be that expensive. The four rechargeable AAA batteries came out to over $22.00; it's now obvious that I haven't purchased batteries in a really long time.
My anxiety went up to about a 90 at this point because
1. I had to tell the cashier that I didn't want those batteries and this involves a certain amount of assertiveness.
2. There was a person waiting in line behind me who I thought was going to get upset by this.
3. The price really surprised me.
In the past, a situation like this would have caused me to leave the batteries behind and leave the store in a panic or I would have purchased the batteries, despite them being expensive, just to avoid a conflict. I took a breath and despite feeling really anxious, I told the cashier that the batteries were too expensive and I that I'll have to purchase regular AAA batteries. I went to get the regular batteries and returned to the same cashier to pay. At this point I noticed an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone a little bit more so I said to the cashier, "I had no idea they were going to be so expensive. These aren't so bad." The cashier smiled and said, "The rechargeable batteries are more expensive." With this, I stepped out of the store still sweating about the same as when I stepped in, but my anxiety at this point was pretty close to zero.
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