This post is based upon my experience and mine alone. 
It’s been quiet around here for almost a week (and on my Instagram, too, which is probably more shocking) and it’s taken me some time to figure out why. I’ve been in a weird place recently and I seemed to be struggling most with blogging. I would sit at my lap top and stare at the blank screen, waiting for the words to come. Every time I started a post, I would slowly begin to hate it, thinking that it wasn’t right – not a perfect fit for my style, my readers or even articulating what I want to say. I tried to blame my blahs on being a Burned Out Toddler Mom but I knew it was something more.
I’ve joked often on this space about being high strung, needing to double down on my meds and some of my other neuroses, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever outright explained that I was diagnosed with anxiety when I was in my mid twenties. Looking back, it is very clear to me that I have always battled anxiety but when I was younger, I didn’t know that what I was experiencing was any different than what anyone else was going through. As I’ve gotten older and taken on more responsibilities and life experiences, my anxiety became a larger part of my life. Typically, my anxiety is well managed with medication, a few behavioral tricks, self awareness
and acceptance on my part, but occasionally, and sometimes without
provocation, the anxiety really ramps up and takes over.
 My anxiety tends to manifest itself in a few main ways, one of them being my extreme response to making mistakes. If I feel like I’ve made a mistake or need to be corrected, I die a little inside (imagine feeling like you’ve been hit in the belly, heart racing, face hot and pulse throbbing all at once). I can remember, in sharp detail, incredibly small mistakes that I made as far back as five or six years old, even if they did not result in any sort of embarrassing moment. Somehow that crazed anxiety was wrapping itself up in creative mind, leaving me feeling like anything that I wrote wouldn’t be good enough and would thus be yet another mistake. 
As everyone knows, I love having an identity outside of Wife and Mom (no need to sound the alarm, I love my Wife and Mom roles most). Being a blogger typically brings me so much energy and purpose and the thought of losing that aspect of my life because of my misplaced anxiety was incredibly nerve wracking to me. 
And cue a new panic over losing my creative drive (ugh, are ya’ll tired of reading this yet?).
If that doesn’t make sense to you, that’s OK. Sometimes anxiety doesn’t make sense and it looks and feels different to all of us, so I get the confusion. In fact, just last Sunday, I was up on stage blabbing to an audience of strangers about how to dress their post baby lumps and bumps without breaking a sweat. Public speaking can send even the baddest B running for the hills but I was knee deep in a rough anxiety patch and up there loving every second. 
It’s not rational but that’s anxiety.

 What matters most is that I was a little lost in it but I’ve figured out (and said out loud) what’s been keeping me tied up in knots and away from my keyboard. I made a valiant effort to spare everyone from this post (honestly, I did) but everything else I tried to write just kept turning towards my anxiety roller coaster – and no one wants to read an Easy Dinner Recipe post tinged with anxiety.

If you’re still hanging in there at this point I hope you don’t have a headache from trying to decipher my stream of consciousness and thanks for indulging me in this one.

If you’re suffering with anxiety, just know that I empathize with all of the wildness churning inside of that brain of yours and am sending calm thoughts your way.

 
 
Linking up with Jess, Annie and Natalie today