Trigger Happy

Last night after a productive but eventful day, I started to feel that familiar sense of foreboding. I knew the anxiety was coming, and for once, I knew why. Coffee. I had made the mistake of spending an hour in Costa. As I sipped on my skinny caramel latte, I knew there would probably be payback, but it was so tasty and felt like such a treat, so I kept drinking.

Identifying anxiety triggers is something that I’ve only recently began to contend with. In the past, I’ve always believed that my anxiety came from nowhere, it usually hit me from out of the blue and I could never really pinpoint why. A few weeks ago, my therapist suggested I start keeping a mood diary. It was such a simple idea and yet I’d never thought of it before.

Every day for 2 weeks, I jotted down every time I felt anxious, how strong the feelings were, what I was doing at the time, and any thoughts I could remembering having. Initially, I wasn’t convinced that it was helpful, but as time went on, I did begin to see patterns emerging.

Coffee was a straightforward enough trigger to deal with. I had never been a huge coffee drinker – it had always given me the shakes – and so it was fairly easy to limit this. But some triggers, such as vivid dreams, were much harder to eliminate.

It took me a while to realise that criticism, or more commonly, fear of criticism, brought on my anxiety and yet, it had been staring me straight in the face for so long. I have always been an over thinker and a catasrophiser, but I’d never been able to joint up the dots. I would go over and over conversations in my head, wondering if I could have said something differently. I would shy away from social situations, afraid of behaving inappropriately or saying the wrong thing. I would write the same WhatsApp message over and over and then end up not sending anything because it was just easier to not risk sounding silly or upsetting someone. I had (and still have) horrifically low self-esteem.

It’s not the easiest thing to admit to yourself and I’m sure to some it sounds incredibly self-absorbed. For years, I’ve been scared of truly being myself and that’s probably resulted in me coming across as quite standoffish at times. What I thought was shielding me from pain and rejection was actually hindering my friendships.  But it is something that I can address, and I’m working really hard to change my ways of thinking (that’s probably a blog for another day though.)

If you’re struggling to figure out what makes you anxious, I would strongly recommending keeping a record of your mood. And maybe stay away from those caramel lattes too!