My hate letter to my anxiety

Dear Anxiety, I hate you. I hate how you show up sometimes unannounced for no good reason. I hate how you team up with my depression and paralyze me. How, after years of therapy, I know what I SHOULD do to make myself feel better, but you won’t let me. I hate how you make me dread doing tasks that I’ve done hundreds of times. Today, I was afraid of emailing lab results. Not because they were bad, but because a little voice in the back of my head kept telling me I was a failure. I hate how you war with my logical side and convince me that the things I should be doing make me a worthless human being. And I hate how being sick always triggers you and doesn’t allow you to accept rest as a thing to do.

When I started this blog, the goal was to spread cool science facts and break down information into ways that people who don’t have a science background can understand and won’t get overwhelmed by. The goal was to create a post at least every week highlighting new research or just fun things I learned. But then anxiety took over. And day after day, I would tell myself that tomorrow was the day I was finally going to get back on the computer and write. I love writing about science. I love researching and reading journal articles. I love learning new facts and finding out why. Why potatoes might be a new cure for anxiety (because who doesn’t love French fries?)? Why wombat poop is cubed? What is cortisol, and why is the internet is telling you it’s cause of all your problems? But anxiety has kept me from doing any research and writing anything. So, I’m writing a hate letter to anxiety. And posting it because hey, a blog post is a blog post and maybe it’ll get me started writing again. And because sharing my anxiety may help others realize they aren’t the only ones suffering.