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If you are anything like me, you might find that your anxiety and emotional distress skyrocket when things don't go as planned. It can become an obsession to fix the problem right away. For me, I feel like my brain is short circuiting 😵 and the best way I can describe it is like the little exploding head emoji 🤯.  

The need to find a solution can completely dominate my day, making it hard to focus on anything else. I become laser-focused on solving the problem, and I can't think about anything else until it's done. Now I know everyone likes to resolve issues but this is on a whole new level. 

So the question is why? For a person who suffers with anxiety, why is the experience so much more severe? I know that one of my triggers is the sense of no longer being in control. And then there is the uncertainty of the outcome and the ability to only see a negative result to the situation.

When trying to explain this to my husband I have even said that I feel like I am going crazy. Like my emotions have a mind of their own and I am just along for the ride. My feelings take over completely, and it's like I'm just watching myself react. The ironic thing is I can only see the bigger picture once the dust has settled and then I usually realise it wasn't such a huge deal. 

There are lots of tips out there on how best to cope when in this situation and different techniques will work for different people but for me I now write it down in my journal and try to work through my feelings on the paper, I think, well if ….. [insert situation here 😆] does or doesn't happen, what would be the steps I would then take. Seeing it written down in front of me does help to focus my mind a little and can help me get back on track to a certain degree. I also try to remember a time when some other situation occurred and realise that that occurrence is now just a memory, and hopefully the situation I am in now will also become just a memory in time. 

I wish I could give you all an answer that would just make it all ok but as we all know it's not that easy. I wanted to write about it, just to say you are not alone if you too suffer as I do in these circumstances. It is a natural reaction, it's just more intensified for those of us with any sort of anxiety. 

Writing this reminded me of the saying “computer says no!” which is most famously associated with the Little Britain sketch, where David Walliams, as Carol Beer, uses the phrase when dealing with customer service requests. And I realised that I must have a little help desk advocate in my brain, only instead of providing support, guidance, and solutions to problems they have been trained to be a hinderer and obstructor who simply offers a "non-answer answer,” Imagine it as an automated phone system: You make a call to the help desk and navigate through an automated phone menu, pressing buttons to get to the right department. However, no matter what you press, you keep getting sent back to the main menu that says “I'm sorry, but that's not a choice I can process" or "It looks like that option isn't on the list. Please try a different choice." So I am going to continue to try and have a go at retraining that little customer service representative in my brain. Now they might need to go on a few training courses to get there but that's ok 😆.
It gives me a chuckle, I hope it might give you one too.

Thank you for reading and a virtual hug to you all. 



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