How to Deal with Anxiety

Throughout my life I have had anxiety. Sometimes this anxiety has been a hindrance to achieving my desires in life, and sometimes it hasn't. Sometimes I have sought medication to break the cycle of anxiety, but most times in my life I have chosen to live without taking medicine for it. But since I choose to mostly live without medication, I do have an interest in behavioral modification methods for minimizing the impact of my anxiety. And one of those methods I have often seen is the idea that for 5 or 10 minutes per day, you should worry. About everything and anything that might be possible to worry. 

And then..... move on. And so I tend to do this. Whether by expressing worries about things, or complaining about things, I spend a short amount of time, most days but not all, worrying and/or complaining. Getting it out of my system, so to speak.

One of the most difficult things about the "Stay-at-home-Dad" job, for me, has been the social isolation. I have no close friends, and no close family members. I have nobody to enjoy a morning coffee with. When my daughters were younger, we didn't have any regular play groups, once my wife uprooted us for the first of two job relocations. Not having an office to work at, there is no equivalent, for me, of the water cooler.

And so I've found the practice of blogging to be my replacement water cooler. And I apologize to those that read this thinking I spend my days complaining. Because I don't, really. There are certainly some things that bother me, sometimes more so than other times. But I don't think that's abnormal. And that is something that I have learned through blogging, and reading the website blogs of others.