My inner Dialogue

I’m sitting here after a very long day, (hair up, face washed, in pj’s) ready for bed. However, my brain seems to think that it is the morning and is raring to go. That’s one of the biggest tolls that anxiety takes on me. On what I now consider a good day, my mind is fairly inactive, sure it feels like I’m physically hauling a freight train behind me with every step, but at least all I have to worry about is moving, not about monitoring every thought that crosses my mind.

If it sounds absurd to be aware of your every thought, take a minute for me and imagine that nearly every thought that you have is negatively intended towards yourself. That what seems like the most innocent train of thought will morph into a horrifying inner speech so filled with verbal abuse that you couldn’t even imagine saying it to your worst enemy. However it doesn’t seem like it’s coming from your worst enemy, it’s coming from yourself, and who could possibly know you better than yourself? I think we have the tendency to believe that what we think as an absolute truth, which is part of the reason why we bounce our thoughts off of our friends. We either want to be supported in our ‘rightness’ or we wish to be told by another that we’re off base. Now for somebody who has an unaffected way of thinking it is ok to believe and accept their inner dialogue as true, as least until it becomes necessary to clarify wrong thinking. However, for a mind that is affected by anxiety, believing in what your mind tells you is similar to living with a bully that is ever present and privy to your deepest fears and insecurities.