Tag: anxiety

I miss her so much..

Published on by Anamika2 Comments

I wish she was there with me today, I wish she got to see me grow up, I wish she was her right now, so I could tell her “Grandma I got the job, I am big girl now”

Growing up I had amazing relationship with my grandparents, especially my grandma. She was the sweetest person I knew. My friends who have met her fell in love with her sweet and kind personality.

These days I miss her way too much. Grandma has always been the one I went to for advice on anything and everything. I could talk to her without any fear, it just felt natural telling her all my problems. I miss those days when life was simple, coming back home from school to see mom and Grandma wait for me and I’d rant all that happened throughout the day.

Now that I think about it, I can’t really figure out when did things get so complicated. I mean it seems like yesterday when didn’t wake up in the morning not being anxious about how my day would be. I didn’t have think about consequences of decisions, no no wait I didn’t even have to take decisions ( those good old days)

I loved evenings those days when my grandma sat me down with chai (tea) in her hand and read me stories from books, we spoke about her childhood, school life, life as a mom etc and also helped me with homework. These days I am busy with assignments and test preparations in the evenings, I go to bed early because I have to wake up early for college. (Monotonous routine)

I wish she was here to greet me with her infectious smile when I was having a rough day at college, I wish she was here to see me graduate, get a job, start a life. I wish she was here to guide me. But she’s not

Grandma may not be here today but I am pretty sure her prayers are still protecting me today.

Nightmares, insomnia and more..

Published on by AnamikaLeave a comment

Well well well, if it’s not my paranoid conscious mind projecting it’s fears on to my subconscious mind.

For the past one year I’ve been constantly having nightmares. I have difficulty sleeping for long duration, usually I wake up in the middle of the night or sometimes several times a night. I don’t how to explain but I feel a little out of place in my life.

Last year wasn’t one of my best years to be honest, I wasn’t myself, low self-esteem, and my tendency to people please was all time high. As a result I started hating myself more, because since I wasn’t myself and also I was trying so hard, I was attracting the wrong kind of people in my life.

This is my biggest regret, because I compromised my mental health and values by having these people in my life just because I didn’t want to be lonely. So I lost respect for myself, and believe me it’s miserable having to live like that.

All these things haunt me at night, all the things I should have said, all those times I didn’t stand up for what I believe in, all the things I ignored when I shouldn’t have.

Now I can’t completely cut them off immediately but I have learnt that I need to detach my self emotionally from them. I have taken my first step and reduced my interactions with them. I am learning how to set boundaries and reduce my dependence on them.

A video that helped me understand all this was that of Nathaniel Drew, he explained how the overrated advice of “be yourself” has much more deeper meaning and impact on our lives.

All I want to say is that don’t try to be something you are not just to keep certain people in your life, and from my experience I can tell you that, it’s definitely not worth it.

P.S I am planning to post some storytimes on my blog next. So umm… stick around if you love storytimes.

Coping with a Panic attack at 1 am

Published on by Anamika2 Comments

Last night I had a bad panic attack and was having a hard time calming myself down. My brain was churning out thoughts at a speed of about 400 km/ph (at least that’s what it felt like)

Laying in bed at 1 a.m. I am hyperventilating and absolutely helpless. I want to stop worrying but I just can’t, it’s like I’ve lost control over my mind. It’s not that I am worrying about one specific thing, instead my brain is attacking me from different directions by throwing countless intrusive thoughts all at once to overwhelm me.

I tried deep breathing which reduced my hyperventilation to some extent but my mind was still spiraling. I haven’t had a panic attack this bad for quite some time so I was kind of unprepared to deal with this.

I literally google my way through life. From checking spellings and meanings to cooking, google has always been a helpful friend. Naturally I decided to turn to it for help

I skimmed through a bunch of websites which showed the same generic techniques that apparently calms mind. These techniques were like, ‘just breathe’ or something like ‘take a warm bath’. The thing is it’s 1 a.m. I am tired and can barely move but even if I did decide to take a warm bath it would wake my family so it didn’t seem practical.

That’s when I discovered these three techniques that helped me calm down and eventually sleep. Let me tell one thing, these things worked for me but it may not work for everyone. You can try them and if it works for you great! I am happy I could help but if it doesn’t then keep looking for the one that helps you (also mention your personal techniques down in the comments so that it helps someone who needs it)

ASMR. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response(ASMR) is a relaxing and tingly sensation that you feel on your scalp or the back of your neck (that’s where I feel) when you listen to certain sounds like tapping, crinkling of paper etc. This technique works like magic. I mean it just triggers all of the right nerves and helps to instantly calm down the mind. There are a lot of asmr videos on YouTube, try different videos and find out what suits you the best.

Aesthetic / A Simple day in my life vlogs. These are not those vlogs where the youtuber wakes up and jumps into action. No no no, instead these are slower paced vlogs where usually the youtuber never talks but casually goes about their normal day. The reason I find these videos so relaxing is because it reflects the simplicity of life. Since the narrator isn’t talking you start focusing on the background sounds, like the chirping of the birds or the sound of vegetables being cut against a cutting pad, it just shows that life doesn’t necessarily have to be complicated to be happy. I have watched Japanese and Korean vlogs they are really calm and aesthetic.

Last but not the least

Spotify. For me listening to music has always been a therapeutic experience. While traveling to and fro from college in a crowded bus, music has always been my savior. So here I am not talking about songs, I am talking about instrumental music. I feel when we listen to songs our brain puts in extra effort to understand and retain the lyrics, but when we are trying to calm our minds our brain which is already overwhelmed with thoughts should have minimal job to do. These instrumental music just flows throughout your body and it really calms down the restless mind.

So these are the three things that helped me sleep peacefully last night. To be honest I thought I’d stay awake the the whole night, because even closing my eyelids felt like a chore at one point, but eventually I did get a good night’s sleep and that’s what matters.

Starting afresh

Published on by AnamikaLeave a comment

Honestly I started this blog as a personal dairy where I’d share my thoughts, experiences and just life things in general. I’ve always loved reading personal blogs where a person writes about their day, their jobs and such stuff. Some people might find it boring and mundane but I for one love it.

It’s a form of escapism I guess where I am trying to forget my problems.

I suffer from anxiety and I wanted to share my stories here without the fear of being judged, but instead I became even more conscious about my blog posts. I kept on re-reading them again and again just to make sure I don’t make a fool out of myself, tried to make them as perfect as possible finding the perfect picture for the blog and never being satisfied with the title. All this became exhausting and it started to feel like my school assignments which I hated btw.

This is how I have been living my whole life. I take things way too seriously and never actually enjoy anything.

I love to write because I can express my self better in writing than oral communication, but because I was stressing about my posts being perfect, it just sucked the fun out of it. So I started procrastinating in order to avoid it. That made me feel even worse

#Millenniallifecrisis is my inspiration, she’s funny, sarcastic and intelligent. I love to read her posts, it’s so personal and her stories are really entertaining.

I’ve just started blogging I don’t know a lot about it. I want to write about things that make me happy and not force my self to write about certain topics just to get views.

One thing I can tell for sure is that I am going to keep this blog simple and raw. I am going to talk about how I survived my college years with general anxiety and social anxiety. Things I learned about people, friendships and lot more.

Also I am a sucker for good artwork be it movies, books or music videos, so you can expect one or two appreciation posts.

I hope you guys would want to be a part of this journey with me. If yes please do follow me and press that like button, its always nice to get some validation 🙂

Okay so that’s it for now, hope to see you for my next post, byeee ❤

One epic life

Published on by AnamikaLeave a comment

To live is the rarest thing in the world, most people exist, that is all.
– Oscar wilde

Yeah that’s right, I am one of those ‘most people‘ Oscar Wilde is talking about. I live my dream life in my head but lack the courage to chase after it. Most of you must know at least one person who sticks with the safest route, avoids trying anything new, gets severe anxiety in unfamiliar situations, that’s exactly how I live or rather exist. I’ve never actually lived my life only survived it.

This monotonous routine often makes me depressed and question my existence.I lay in my bed at night regretting every opportunity I missed. Living with regret is the worst feeling ever and to make things worse my brain is constantly churning out ‘what if’ scenarios.

What if I hadn’t backed out from that trip? What if I had appeared for that competitive exam I spent a year preparing for? What if I hadn’t chickened out from a conversation with my crush?  (well that’s an embarrassing story for another time) Ughh! I don’t know what would have happened if, but all I know it was worth taking the risk.

I stuck with safe options because I thought nothing would ever go wrong. My perspective changed when I met my now best friend.

Her personality is exact opposite of mine. She is spontaneous, cheerful, extroverted and has very little regrets in life. In one of our deep conversation sessions she said one thing that stuck with me “we take decisions thinking they are right, wanting them to be right but  it’s beyond our control to have predicted the end result” A weight was lifted off my chest. All my life I was obsessed with being perfect, waiting for the perfect moment to do stuff so that nothing goes wrong. But what I didn’t realize was that, even safe options fail so might as well take that risk.

Now I know that there’s a whole world with endless possibilities waiting for me, there’s so much I haven’t seen or experienced, great cities, their culture, art, food, music and yes of course people. Maybe I’ll meet a lot of interesting ones who’ll completely change my perspective on certain matters, some of them may become life lessons and perhaps a few of them will stay in my life forever. 

You might think that these are just things I hope and wish would happen. Well life is anything but predictable that doesn’t mean we can’t hope for a better tomorrow, after all, hopes and dreams are what keeps us going.

It’s just one life, just one, so make sure it’s an epic one.