Anxiety

Anxiety

10 Things (Finally) Being Treated For Anxiety Taught Me

Being someone who has suffered from chronic anxiety for well over a decade and who is writing a humor book about anxiety is a bizarre experience. So much of what I've gone through has been decidedly less-than-funny, but now, as part of the writing process, I've been scrolling back through old posts I've written on the topic with a new perspective. I mean, I hallucinated tiny banana-shaped people sitting in my linen closet and telling me they could help me sleep. (True story.)

Come on. That's funny.

But re-reading these posts is doing something else: it's making me remember just how rough that (extremely long) time period was, because it's easy for me - a person who is now capable of sleeping through the night without bolting straight up in bed at 3AM, wide-awake and sobbing because DEATH IS REAL - to forget how out of control my life used to feel, because I simply couldn't rely on my own brain to do what I wanted it to do.

Anxiety

The Big Activity Book…For Anxious People

Thankful for a lot of things this year, including the fact that I didn't actually die from the stomach flu yesterday, despite appearances, and the fact that deathly illnesses are apparently a lot more fun when they involve a purring kitten on your chest. But one of the things I'm most thankful for of all is the chance to write books, and to see them on shelves; it's a dream come true to get to call myself an author, and - for my most recent project, and the next one - to get to work alongside such a searingly funny, talented partner.

So: coming up in Spring 2019...The Big Activity Book For Anxious People, by Erin and me. (Never before have there been two people more perfectly suited to tackle this subject matter.)

To kick off the whole process (and to celebrate a bit), Erin and I thought we'd do something a little different. If you make a donation to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, you'll be entered in a drawing to have the image of your choice (you, your best friend, your dog, a baked potato, whatever) drawn into the pages of the new book. Oh, and if you donate $100, you automatically get your image included somewhere in there. Support great cause --> be in awesome book. What's to to love?!

Anxiety

Defy Your DNA: On Hair Loss, Stage Fright, and Change

Zara sweater (similar) & jeans (similar) | Jimmy Choo ankle boots (similar)

There are some things that live in your DNA - like, say, eye color, or a taste for Yodels - things that are guaranteed to be a part of your life practically from the moment of conception. (Kidding about the Yodels, but only a tiny bit: Yodel-loving is definitely part of my personal genetic makeup.) Some of these things can feel like an essential, even necessary part of who you are, but even so: that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to define your future. Not if you don’t want them to.

Take, for example, my stage fright. The stories I can tell about the ways that my anxieties about speaking in front of people wreaked havoc on my life and my career are too many to count.

Anxiety

Totally Cool With You Calling Me Crazy

emergency preparation kits and how to put one together

Maybe time to toss those rose-colored glasses? (via)

OK, so warning: this post is going to sound very "end of times," and perhaps more than a little...ah, crazy. But bear with me, because I'm not going to tell you to invest in an underground bunker (obviously I already looked into this, and alas, they're distressingly hard to come by, not to mention really quite pricey).

Truth: in my heart of hearts (and despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary), I do not believe that anything really bad - in the vein of a serious natural disaster or a terrorist attack - can actually happen to me. Because, of course, I am invincible. And even if something did happen, everything would probably be fine in the end...right? Isn't that how it works?

Anxiety

Why I Drive

In the apple trees | Somewhere on I-5

I get asked about this (ancient) sweater all the time, and fiiinally found a similar one.

Whenever I make the drive down to L.A. - as I have at least once every two months since we moved to San Jose - I make up excuses to explain why I'm going. This time, for example, my excuses were: 1) I have a couple of meetings scheduled, 2) Francesca and I always have our own little mini-holiday celebration together, and 3) I just took a "special trip" with Goldie, and wanted to give Indy a special trip of his own.


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