It Turns Out My Therapist Was Right All Along

I’ve struggled with anxiety for my entire adult life. I’ve been in therapy for it (with the same therapist) for about 8 years now. Over that time she has repeatedly encouraged me to work towards lowering my baseline anxiety. As she explains it, if the baseline is lower than the spikes won’t be as extreme.

I’ve repeatedly blown off this suggestion. My spikes are so extreme that I hardly notice my baseline anxiety anyway. I want to work on the part that makes me feel horrible. I can live with the baseline. Well friends, it turns out she was right all along.

This winter I had to have my first surgery and although I recovered well, I was still down for the count for the better part of a month. During that time I was working hard at bringing my anxiety down on account of the surgery, which made it spike quite a bit. Well, when the spike finally came down I just...kept doing the things that were calming.

There are a number of things I was doing to help to bring down my anxiety. No one thing does the trick but rather everything helps just a tiny bit and eventually it adds up to noticeable change. Things that help include lighting candles or having fires in the fireplace, warm lighting, drinking tea, cozying up under blankets, wearing comfortable clothing, taking baths, seeing green growing things, limiting social media time, reading books (especially fantasy), monitoring my thought patterns and correcting any catastrophizing, deep breathing, going for walks and other gentle exercise, keeping in contact with my friends and family, and eating unprocessed foods. I’m sure there are tons of things I’m forgetting but that’s a pretty good list to give you an example of what I mean.

Many of these things I had to do after my surgery as part of my recovery. That made it easier to prioritize this. What I started to notice around a month and a half post surgery was that things that would normally scare me were not scary anymore. For instance I have some significant fears around food borne illnesses and allergy cross-contamination. Because of those fears I often have trouble eating food that I have not prepared.

So, around this time I went to a party with about 30 people. I only knew about 3 of them. Without even thinking about it I noticed I was eating the food. Food that people I don’t know had made. My contribution was a cheese platter and as I was packing it up to head home I thought to myself “Eric and I can eat this for dinner tonight.” That was when my normal thoughts came back and I thought, “what am I saying? This stuff has been sitting out for hours and dozens of people have potentially touched it!” Nonetheless I had several hours where I wasn’t thinking about all those fears and I was able to enjoy that party.

My best guess for the change was that I’d been spending so much time “embracing the cozy” and that had brought down my baseline anxiety. Nothing else had changed. Then, when I found myself in a situation that would normally cause me anxiety, it just didn’t cause nearly as much. The spike was lower because the baseline was lower. Just like my therapist said it would be.

I suppose there’s two potential morals of this story. One is that if you have anxiety, consider focusing on the baseline level rather than only focusing on the spikes. It has made a big difference to me. The other of course is to listen to your therapist. They are very good at this.