Sunshine and anxiety

 

I haven’t talked about my anxiety much on my blog. I wrote about it in my book I published this last December but I haven’t written about it publicly on my blog.

I have anxiety, something I always kind of figured I had but didn’t want to ever try and get help for. It wasn’t until February of last year when it got really bad that I decided to try and talk to someone and get help.

I’m definitely not 100 percent but I’m so much better than when I started my journey to get better.

Lately I’ve been working overtime to battle my anxiety.

With everything going on in the world it’s really challenging to fight the negative thoughts in your mind.

When school first got cancelled for two weeks and our track season was put on hold I was devastated to say the least. I was completely crushed for my athletes and a losing a part of my life that I loved so much for a few weeks.

I had so many negative thoughts literally trying to force their way into my mind. It was such a strange feeling. Negative thoughts in mind while my heart was trying to tell myself to be positive.

I now find myself sitting in a position where I’m hanging on the edge of my seat waiting to see if our track season can continue and my life can start getting back to normal, and I genuinely believe that it will and that we will get a small bit of a track season in the end.

I’m not just saying that, and I may be one of the few people with positive thoughts left but it’s completely true.

It’s hard to truly believe something in your heart when your anxiety is trying to fight back with negative thoughts and feelings. I feel like I’m having this internal battle that my mind is working overtime to beat.

I’ve been doing pretty good considering the circumstances. I am able to continue my grad school work, work for my job, workout, and care for my amazing family.

But today I was struggling.

I was a little yesterday too.

Not completely sure why I found myself with this awful headache and bad thoughts.

In the midst of my work this morning I found it trying to sneak it’s way back in, I decided to sweat it out.

Not like I normally do however, I wanted to take it outside.

I have these giant doors leading to the backyard in my bedroom. I could see the bright blue sky and sun shining bright, something took over and told me to do my workout in the backyard.

I ran outside with my spotify playlist, workout mat, and dog to get started.

I was having a great workout and sweating my face off.

I had all these thoughts like “see Megan all you needed was your workout” and “fresh air fixes everything.”

At the end I decided to stretch like I usually do, except afterwards I was drawn to lay down on my mat.

I found this little pocket of sunshine and found it hitting my face.

I continued to lay there with the warm sun on my face and nothing but the music in my ear with thoughts running through my mind.

It felt like the montage at the climactic point in a movie.

All of a sudden I saw my college track days of running down the track in the heat with my best friend.

I saw myself laughing on the sidelines with my hurdlers.

I saw myself running down the country roads near my old house.

I saw track meets and smiles.

The wind picked up and ran across my face and I actually smiled.

I’m not making that up to sound cheesy it actually happened.

Happiness came over me in that moment as I remembered what sunshine around this time of year usually meant. I was almost brought to tears with pure joy.

In that moment I remembered that I absolutely love the sunshine and sweat running down my face. I love feeling hotter than it actually was outside.

My intentions aren’t to flood you with positivity and messages of “appreciate your life and what you have now compared to others.”

My intentions are to remind you that negative thoughts are ok.

Trying to beat them is ok.

Smiling your face off while dancing to Dua Lipa in the backyard during your workout us ok.

I felt selfish for a moment. Why was I enjoying myself and smiling while some people are scared and worried, but I was reminded that it was ok.

All sorts of emotions are ok in a time like this.

You can be scared, nervous, happy, sad, anxious, excited.

Literally, it’s all ok.

This post was brought to you by sunshine and anxiety.

❤