A situation happens. A mistake is made. Wait. Let me clarify my meaning. I make a mistake. And then I realize that I have made a mistake but it’s too late because it’s done. Happened. Past tense. But the past doesn’t like to stay in the past. The past likes to inhabit the present and mingle with the future. And so, as I scramble to make up for my mistake or fix my mistake or apologize for my mistake (or do all three at the same time), I not only have to deal with the mistake. I have to fight my anxiety.

Anxiety is a vicious thing. A cannibalistic shark, it gnaws on my guts. Tightens the esophagus. Concretes the lungs. My favorite way to try and purge my anxiety is to do long breaths out. Not a sigh. But I guess it’s a sigh. I’m trying to relax the lungs, release the anxiety. But I draw attention to myself. 

“Are you all right?”

Sure. Fine. Nothing to look at here. Just a clown trying to juggle and ride a unicycle when I don’t have balance or hand-eye-coordination. 

When a mistake happens or something needs to happen or the whatever button was punched, my anxiety flares. Like the applause-o-meter jerking from 0-silent to 10-cacophony. I feel like my brain is a massive flare gun, just pyrotechnic red with sparks bursting out everywhere. 

I can’t think. Can’t process. Can’t do much more than try to take a step forward and pray.

With reframing, I have been doing better with the anxiety. I twist the emotional rubiks cube. It’s not this. It’s. The blistering different colors on one side can, with a few turns of the cube, become a single color. A single frame of reference. 

My brain has been so happy with this. My life has been so much better. I’m not avoiding reality. But I’m refusing to allow the anxiety to shriek from 0 to 11 in nth nanoseconds. I don’t have to respond this way 95% of the time. 

I am learning the art of not panicking and surrendering to the the anxiety. I choose not to immediately run to the person whom I have wronged or the source of my mistake and….

And.

So when I recently ran headlong into a mistake, I fought the a-word. I fought hard. I refused to go to level ten and huddled around a four. I worried. I fretted. And I worked. I pushed myself forward and did my best to do my best because I couldn’t go backward. I could do my best to repair and fix the situation. But it was in the past. And the present still had work to be done.

I wish I could say that I stayed at a level four in terms of my anxiety. But I made it through the initial hours. But the anxiety monster roared to life while I was asleep and I woke up at least once. And the ruminating thoughts chewed through my resolve.

Five.

And the gnawing continued during the morning dog walk.

Five point five.

I do my best not to break. Before, I was a crumbling mess. Now, I am a fractured wall. But it’s better. And I will take that.

I wish I could stop making mistakes. But in the afternoon walk, I realized that the reason I never hear about other people’s mistakes is because people don’t broadcast their mistakes. We tuck them into quiet, dark places and pray that they don’t evidence themselves. 

I guess my anxiety-o-meter isn’t so rare as I thought it was. But it’s nice to hover at a four. 

Maybe, next time. Three?