the goods, the bads

I still wake up anxious.

What's different is that my mind doesn't immediately latch onto the first thing to blame my anxiety on. When I'm at my best, I'm able to say "welp, there goes my anxiety acting up again. Let me just focus on what I can do to bring my anxiety down to a manageable level."

Then, I spring into action and work, work, work, work, work, or take a few deep breaths, or distract myself with garbage media (thanks, Internet), or exercise...

Sometimes I'm able to forget about the anxiety.

And other times it just stays with me.

I was anxious all day today. I didn't have a particular "trigger" or something to blame for my anxiety. I mean, yeah, work is always crazy. As a teacher, you always have to be on. You have to be consistent in upholding your rules for every student; you have to deal with conflict with infinite patience; you have to repeat yourself many times; you have to decide how to deal with many, many, many people's needs and emotions; you wake up early to not have to rush to work and battle traffic, you get to work early to start prepping your materials, you teach all day and meet with students in every tiny little crack of time to field individual needs, you tutor after school, you grade after that...

So yeah, work is crazy.

Still, I had nothing to fear, right?

And yet.

And yet.

This is how I dealt with my anxiety today: I blamed nothing on my anxiety. I smiled a lot. I spoke very sweetly with students. I exercised lots and lots of patience. And I worked and worked and worked.

I'm eager to return to therapy and hear what else I can do to manage (...cure?! please, God, cure...) my anxiety.