Talking to Myself

     "Don't be ridiculous, Megan. Come on, you know you're not actually going to suffocate. Just stop it! This is stupid. You were fine. What did you do? Why can't you just...?" This was the conversation I had with myself (in my head, of course) the other night, during and after an anxiety spike. This is the conversation that I have internally pretty much every time I experience an anxiety spike. I sound harsh, right?
     I basically say everything to myself that I wouldn't want anyone else to say to me. I'd be angry with someone if they talked to me the way I talk to myself about my anxiety. I would never say these things to anyone else struggling with any kind of mental health condition. I would be understanding, kind, and (hopefully) helpful if I stumbled upon a friend in the middle of an anxiety attack. Yet, I wasn't extending the same understanding and kindness to myself.
     I didn't even realize how negative I was when I talked to myself about my OCD until my therapist pointed it out. At my last session, she asked me what I would think or say to myself while I was experiencing an anxiety spike. I gave her the rundown of my usual internal conversation. She was quick to point out that I could definitely turn my internal dialogue in a more positive direction.
     Negative self talk can have damaging consequences. I was putting more pressure on myself than I should have been to continue improvements instead of just being grateful that I've improved at all. I was saying some pretty harsh things to myself, and that was keeping my confidence on the low end when I was dealing with my OCD, which in turn was making my spikes last longer and be worse in general than they should have been.
     My negative self talk was also keeping me focused on the physical symptoms of my anxiety. I felt like I couldn't breathe, so I was reminding myself over and over that I wasn't actually going to suffocate, which wasn't helpful. My chest hurt, so I was reminding myself that a panic attack wasn't actually going to cause a heart attack. I was scanning my thoughts and even the events of the day to see what I had done to cause my own spike, which just kept me locked in rumination and made me blame myself. Then I was getting frustrated because I couldn't just shut down the anxiety, which just added to the anxiety. I had anxiety about my anxiety, and the way I was talking to myself about it was only making things worse.
     I was doing the breathing exercises. I was distracting myself. I was trying mindfulness. I was burning lavender oil. I was even trying out yoga. My therapist even said I was doing a lot of the right things to deal with the sudden spikes. The problem was the fact that I was being so negative in the way that I was thinking about my anxiety and talking to myself about it that it that it just kept feeding the anxiety monster.
     I've been more careful with the way I talk to myself lately. When I catch myself engaging in negative self talk, I've started to try to correct it. Instead of saying, "You know you're not going to suffocate," I say instead, "My body is getting enough air." Then instead of blaming myself for having the spike in the first place, I remind myself that maybe it wasn't my fault because my brain may have picked up something in my environment that I wasn't even aware of and associated it with something else that sent off the alarm signals that caused the spike in my anxiety. I've started to notice a significant decrease in my free-floating anxiety as I've tried to engage in more positive self talk. Once again, it feels like I might actually be able to get my anxiety under control.
     I'll end with this: Be kind to yourself. Be patient with yourself. If you wouldn't say it to your friend or someone else you love, why would you say it to yourself? Be careful with the words and the tone you choose when you talk to yourself about anything, but especially when you talk to yourself about something, like a mental health condition, that isn't even your fault.