Anxiety

A question to ponder on Day #18 is to look back over previous journal entries and ask, What emotions are most prevalent? I might have said something else if I hadn't actually looked, but what I see is Anxiety. And I can see that it has always been there, from childhood on . . . that word was never used when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s. My family called it shyness. My sister called it weirdness . . . I remembered today how dreadfully anxious I felt at my first teenage boy-girl parties in which my friends would suddenly play the game, "spin the bottle" -- I thought of how I would sit in that circle and use all my mental faculties and concentration and tenseness to FORCE that bottle to pass me by! It reminds me of Uri Geller trying to bend spoons by his mental powers! That's how tense I would become to try and force that bottle to spin past me! It actually worked as far as I recall -- and I think that "skill" became ingrained in me, something I could use anytime I wanted a college professor to not call on me, etc. I just totally tensed my body and mind -- like trying to bend spoons! It is exhausting. And painful.

 

Great job connecting the dots throughout your past! I used to think my TMS issues started at 21, but after more work, was able to trace it all the way back to 9 years old. Doing so really helps clarify the big picture.