In the past I have made blogs about anxiety and fear. If you're interested in reading more about what I personally experience you can check out the blog at your convenience.

Anxiety & Fears I've Developed In Life

I'm not going to go into huge details about my irrational fears and anxiety but more so the ways I've learned to cope and overcome them. I'm going to go ahead and give a disclaimer that I am not a professional and I have never received any counseling, professional help, medical relief, etc...
Everything I'm talking about is just my own personal experience and things that work for me.

I strongly urge people who suffer from serious medical conditions, disorders, etc... to consult a professional about the issues you may be experiencing. If you have suicidal thoughts and depression, I also suggest that you seek help and share your feelings with people you trust.

I'd like to believe that my anxiety and fears are not debilitating in terms of functioning in my daily life or work environment. My anxiety seems very minute and easily avoided.

Since childhood I've been really particular about phone calls.
If for any reason I would need to call a doctors office, an authority of some kind, my family, the parents of friends, etc... a huge knot of anxiety would ball up in my throat and chest. I would get sweaty and jittery. My thoughts and words would stutter and jump around chaotically so often I would just keep my mouth shut and groan softly. I'd get up and walk around and pep talk myself through things and a half hour would go by before I could finally muster up the courage to go through with making the phone call.

When it came to love interests such as a guy I had a crush on, a guy who had a crush on me, or even boyfriends throughout life, phone calls were still very difficult for me. Calling a guy took so much nerves because of the butterflies I had for him on top of the anxiety of a phone call in general. My voice would always be shaky. My jokes were always embarrassingly bad. Thankfully in these situations I could use the nervousness of my crush to excuse my anxiety as the real culprit.

Any time I could text or email other people I would over calling or leaving a message.
However, as an adult you eventually need to mature and let go of  your childhood qualms.
My job is a lava pit for triggering my anxiety and also my sanctuary for overcoming my anxiety.

I have to call people several times a day and for a long time I would just walk over to them or send an email and wait for a response. To this day I email most things unless it's urgent. But I want to share with you my method of going from never taking a phone call to being a normal functioning human being adult thing.

Taking small steps is a huge portion of understanding, coping, and overcoming your problems.

We can acknowledge that phones themselves don't trigger my anxiety, but more so the physical act of dialing the number and being left to the sound of my own heart beat while listening to the deafening silence with mild crackling hold music before that person picks up finally.

So step one to overcoming my fear of phone calls was communicating with people I already know.
I am comfortable with my co-workers and friends so at work I began paging them directly through the phone lines. Having a familiar voice greet you over the phone eases the anxiety. Most of the time paging someone is very quick so you might say one or two things and then it's over. That quick exchange was the perfect stepping stone that would eventually lead me to paging out loud over the PA system as well as making actual phone calls to outside individuals.

People react to stress differently and sometimes stress motivates me to move forward and other times stress makes me slink back and recluse. It honestly depends on the kind of stress, what triggered the stress, etc...

But in the event that I need to make a phone call, it's usually because an email simply isn't fast enough. Talking to authority is always nerve-wracking because you want to be clear, concise, professional, direct, educated, etc... to give them a good impression. So if I need to call someone higher up than me, that dose of stress is what motivates me to peel the anxiety off of my ability.

After years of utilizing my work area to get over phone call making, I can honestly see how much of a difference I have made in myself. The other day I typed my password wrong too many times on my bank portal and was locked out of my account. The only way to unlock the account is to call the bank and have them reset everything. I could feel my anxiety creeping up on me like a monkey climbing onto its mom. I let my anxiety thrive for a few minutes and went to the kitchen to ease my mind by making food. I pep-talked myself and said, "Ok you're going to call the bank after you're done eating." I like to watch youtube videos while I eat and next thing I know my food  is gone and I'm staring at a plethora of videos waiting to be clicked on. I went to click on one telling myself I'd call the bank after this last video but I recognized the procrastination sinking in and withdrew myself. I closed Youtube completely and picked up my phone and called the number. I got in touch with the rep, got my account reset, etc... and now life is good again.

It is important that when you are faced with an opportunity where anxiety will invite itself in like that, you need to acknowledge that it can come in, that it is already there. You need to give yourself the authority to deny its presence and control over you. This is not something you will have the strength to do on day 1. But after my 4 or 5 years of practice, I have that authority.

I doubt the anxiety of making phone calls will ever completely go away but it is so empowering to know that I can call anyone at any time and do so with confidence and determination. At times I will be nervous and I will hesitate but I always get it done and it's rewarding, even though it's something so stupid.

Another thing I deal with is being lazy.
It is so easy to be lazy and I'm being lazy as we speak. I've been lazy my entire life. I have no excuses for being lazy because my mom did a damn good job at making me do chores any chance she got. In high school I used all of my sick days to stay home and play video games and chat online. I'd push off doing my homework till homeroom the next morning. I value leisure more than anything in life I think. Being on my computer listening to music, playing video games, chatting, etc... is my haven.

Right now I'm slouching in my chair and sitting next to my empty plate from earlier. I need to get up and throw it away. I also have a full dishwasher of clean dishes to put away as well as a few dirty ones to put in. I need to get a shower and I've had wow open for 3 hours and haven't moved my character once.

One thing I do to motivate myself to slip out of being lazy is to reflect on all of the times I had the opportunity to do something now and waited til later to do it and in that moment of the future, wishing I had done that task in the past. I experience this often at work. I have a list of things I want to get done on Monday & Tuesday so that I don't have to do them on Thursday. If I push something off til Thursday, I really REALLY hate myself for it because Thursday is my most busy day and I'm exhausted. I have Wednesday off and I raid with my guild at night before work, so I don't sleep before I go into work at midnight. I work from 12am to 12pm sometimes later. So 12 hours of working without any sleep and minimal eating, puts me in a zombie mode. If I push something off early in the week, it bites me in the ass that day.

You know the whole WWJD? What would Jesus Do? Well I've coined that for myself in terms of now me and future me. I love future me so now me should do things for future me to make future me happy.

Have you ever gone into a bathroom and the toilet paper roll is empty? Or perhaps you were the last person to use the roll and it has become empty? Replacing the roll takes 5 seconds and for some reason this is something that many people will look at and acknowledge it needs done but will shrug it off for the next person. When I was a kid I was that person. But as an adult, I am not. When I see the roll go empty if I am using it, for a second I will shut off the lights and go on about my life but then I think about the possibility of me being the next one to go into the bathroom and pooping only to realize there's no toilet paper?!? So now me backpeddles to the closet and gets the roll, replaces the roll, and now me can feel smug knowing she did the right thing for future me.

Likewise, now me is going to do chores so that future me and boyfriend won't have to do them.

Smalls steps to things really go a long way. If you are struggling with something like this, have a sit down with yourself. Organize what it is, what triggers it, what happens when you experience it, what soothes you and what irritates you. Once you have that all laid out, take small steps to inch your way closer to the finish line and one day you'll be able to look back at that thing and laugh at how it ever had control of  you in the first place.

I can't really say my fear of walking on ice has improved because we haven't really had any snow or ice this winter. We had some flurries and that's about it. Apparently a huge snow storm is coming but it's 55○F here so I highly doubt that it's true. I'm expecting flurries again.

I wrote this blog on a whim because of my phone call experience earlier so I apologize if it's all over the place and not structured very well. Thanks for reading. :)