Ok.
I need my sisters. I miss you both. Processing the quirks of our thoughts and actions is the most helpful thing I have found in understand myself and my kids. Partly because we are the same, but also because we are different, but especially because we love each other and we all know that.
Ok.
So I got some stuff going on. I have been reading about anxiety and I read this and it BLEW MY MIND.
The Anxiety Formula:
Overestimation of Threat + Understimation of Ability to Cope= Anxious Response.
Does that sound like perpetual low self esteem?
Could low self-esteem just be the same as anxiety?
Are all the things, people, places, situations that I hate for a multitude of reasons simply due to a gut and instinctual response that my brain is making to protect myself from perceived threats? An assumption that I am smaller and weaker than any threat.
For example:
Overestimation of threat= A particular person will certainly judge me for being stupid, fat, unlikable, or unfunny
Underestimation of self= I totally might be stupid, fat, unlikable or unfunny.
Anxious response= It is always going to be better to not risk that judgement. Avoid all people.
What I am trying to say is that it has never occured to me that those "bad" things are not true, but a faulty wiring in my brain.
Just because I feel like someone is judging me doesn't mean that I am being judged or that whatever I think I might be judged about is even true or real.
In fact, thinking those things are true and fearing that I will be judged for being those things ACTUALLY starts simulating those behaviors out of fear.
I have heard that kids will live up to expectation. If you treat a kid like they are dumb then they act dumb. But why? Is it anxiety?
I don't know if this makes sense, but I am trying to untie this big knot.
If the problem is ADD or Generalized Anxiety, It is brain wiring. And that is different than actually being unlikable or dumb.
Is it another example of "No one hates me more than me"? I'll beat you to the punch?
Help me figure this out...
