The Upside Down: Choosing Pain and Finding Compassion

So what I realized is that I will have a terrible experience rather than another experience that I want less.

What I mean by that is something I realized about my anxiety or feeling anxious.

So I've had anxiety as long as I can remember, and it's been at harder and easier times, and as we sit here now, I have it really largely managed in lots of ways comparatively.

And it still can be a, an issue for me, right? But it's very automatic to feel that feeling.

If you have had anxiety or feelings of anxiety, you know that feeling of that tension in your body or sort of, uh, ruminating worries that don't really land.

They're just sort of a- an energy in you and a feeling in you, a vibration, right? Uncomfortable vibration at its lesser part.

When it's at its worst, it's kind of hell on earth, particularly if you're trying to resist it or are scared what it is.

So I will feel anxious a lot, right? Like feel this vibration, feel this concern, and I don't know how I saw it, but one day I realized when I was feeling anxious, for me, and as usual, put the asterisks, I'm not talking about, uh, mental illness or diagnosed or any of that stuff.

I'm just talking about my experience of my version of anxiety.

I noticed that I was actually choosing it, not consciously as usual until I saw it, but I was trying to choose the pain of anxiety over the pain of what I was responsible for.

Crazy, right? Why would anyone choose anxiety? It's the worst.

Particularly when it's bad, it is so bad.

But what I realized was I'd rather choose anxiety for being responsible for whatever choice I made for the week or the day that I was resisting.

So I'll give you an example.

If I had some training coming up, this is very common 'cause I was very anxious a lot of the time I trained, I would feel anxious.

If I looked what was under that, like I've called this episode the upside down, what it was was that I had chosen to train, I didn't want to, or I didn't wanna prep it, or I didn't wanna do whatever was involved with it, and instead of taking responsibility for the choice, I put kind of anxiety over the top.

Because if I was responsible for the choice, like the psychologist would say, I had an internal locus of control.

It was my choice.

It was only happening because I'd chosen it.

But if I was anxious, anxiety's happening to me.

Poor me, you know, I'm anxious.

There's nothing I can do about that.

I'm an anxious person.

So it's really tricky to see it, right? Like Mark Manson, and he probably got it from somewhere else, but he talks about the idea of which pain do you choose, because there's pain in everything.

One of my life sayings, I suppose, is there's good and bad in everything, and I've said that for a long time, and it kind of ties into this, right? Like, what pain do you choose? So I was choosing feeling like a victim and suffering in anxiety, but I was choosing that over not being a victim and feeling the, "Ugh, what did I put in this week?" Or, "Why did I do that?" Or, "I don't wanna do that." Whatever it might be, right? So there's lots of examples of which pain do you choose that you might find useful if you haven't heard it before.