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Anxiety Made Me Fight With My Best Friend... In My Mind

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Yesterday, I had a huge, knockout fight with my best friend. I thought she was mad at me so I yelled and told her all the things that were on my mind. And she yelled back at me and told me all the things on her mind. I don’t remember all the details but it made me feel drained and disappointed afterward.

The ironic part about the entire argument was that it was not real. It never happened outside of my own anxious mind. Anxiety tends to make you imagine things that feels like reality. It can make you feel as if you’re living entirely in your mind. Of course, the yelling match with my best friend never came to fruition but it took one thing to trigger my imagination… she hadn’t responded to a message I sent her on Facebook. She didn’t respond so that led me to think that she was upset at me which led to another avalanche of irrational thoughts. But it was real for me. So, when I did see her, I was pissed for about five minutes until I realized the interaction never transpired and I was reacting to something she had no part in.

Anxiety, at times (actually quite often) causes me to misinterpret the intentions of those closest to me and create situations that do not exist. There are times I sit and think about a thought or group of thoughts so long that by the time I blink, everything I saw in my head has happened and my mood has changed. The thoughts may be so intense that I start acting out the scenario in real time unknowingly. Yes, this sounds strange and yes, these thoughts are difficult not to have. This often pushes the people in my life away. Instead of trusting them as they are in my life; loving, trustworthy and nonjudgmental people, my mind makes me believe the illogical perception of them that is rooted in my anxious imagination.

Well, my friend wasn’t mad at me at all and I never did tell her about the argument we had in my mind. I know my restless, vivid imagination comes from overthinking about something then anticipating and visualizing all the possible consequences or reasons for whatever I am focusing on. No, these are not hallucinations. This is overthinking to undermine my reality to confirm the habitual contempt I feel for myself.

I know there is no “crazy,” only misunderstood. My mind can be stressful, problematic, dark, unrealistic and strange but despite all this I know I am easy to love…

And no matter what may be going on in your mind you are too.

Unsplash photo via Prince Akachi

Originally published: September 17, 2018
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