Everyone experiences anxiety to some level of degree over something. Like public speaking. You were just asked to give a big presentation to a group of 100 of your peers. How do you feel? That’s a number one fear for many, so chances are good you would feel sick to your stomach. Me? I LOVE that stuff!

The second night of one of my school play we were all on stage in front of an audience waiting for a door bell sound to queue us. It was late. It took several minutes for the tech to get that doorbell to sound. We were all so comfortable in our characters we adlibbed through it and no one even knew. It was exhilarating for me. Even with all those people watching, and even without memorized lines to work from I knew *exactly* how my character was expected to be. I knew the rules.

Another situation I love and thrive in? Interviews. I remember having an interview for a secretary job with a LtCol, a SgtMaj and a pretty no nonsense Administration Chief. These were my husbands big bosses and I should have been terrified. My husband even said he would have been nervous. However, I command in interviews. Because it’s a well rehearsed script for both parties. I play a mental game. I am not the one being interviewed. I, maybe arrogantly, tell myself I’ve already got the job- they aren’t interviewing me to see if I’m the right fit. I am interviewing them to see if they are the right fit for me. I answer the standard set of HR questions almost everyone asks but my goal is to genuinely learn more about the work place and my interviewers than they know about me when I leave.

Sure, I get butterflies before speeches, performing or interviews but I don’t feel the scared to death anxiety.

But then I get the job and spend the next six months rarely making any small talk with anyone and barely making eye contact because I’m running around terrified trying to know every aspect of the job at break neck speed. This overachieving anxiety does help me become effective very quickly but it’s *highly* stressful for me in the mean time.

I anxiety just life’ing. I don’t have a script. I don’t know the rules. Going into social situations sometimes I feel like I’m drowning. Sometimes physically my body takes that drowning feeling literally. Chest constriction, racing heart, sweaty palms, upset stomach, dizzy, etc. It got so bad one time I basically blacked out. I half wonder if I ever have a real heart attack if I’ll just use some anxiety calming strategies and shrug it off as a panic attack.

Jordan Raskopoulos explains this to a T in her ted talk about living with high functioning anxiety. (Here: https://youtu.be/JUedQ0_EGCQ)

I point all of this out because this blog, you helped me in an interesting way the other day. I decided to make that crazy date avocado pudding and wanted to blog that. I took pictures at every step to document it. It was almost like I had an audience while I was making it. When the food processor flung strange pre-pudding water everywhere, normally I would have flipped out. There would have been some negative self talk, some anger, definitely colorful language. I might have even given up the whole ordeal and just gotten the powdered pudding mix out of the cupboard. Instead, I took a picture of the mess, laughed, cleaned it up and kept trying.

I’m not joking. One time a few years ago, I tried to make my cousins beef bourguignon recipe, seriously messed it up and cried on the floor for half an hour because my thinking spiraled out of control irrationally into “I am a failure at life.”

My husband and son still ate it by the way.

I was pleasantly surprised at how this blog experiment really is a very real and very effective therapy strategy for me. So if my posts seem pretty all over the place and not traditionally niche-y that’s because they aren’t. The niche right now is my experiences and hopefully by sharing them I find a few more coping strategies for life but maybe also it helps someone else out there trying to find some coping strategies for surviving their laundry too.