I realized that when I get anxious, I am not running away, I am just freezing 🐧

I might not even have been good at running away.

When I get anxious, I eat chocolate. 🍫 And then I end up watching a lot of videos.

I wanted to get even a little distance from reality, so I thought that doing those inertia-driven things counted as "running away."

But maybe that was not quite right.

I think running away is, in a way, about "moving somewhere."

Even if I eat chocolate, even if I keep watching videos, I am not going anywhere. I am just sitting there, watching time melt away.

Maybe I am not running away. Maybe I am just freezing.

There is this idea that when people feel fear or anxiety, they either "fight or flee." For me, it might look something more like this.

Fight ⚔️ → Freeze 🧊 → Flee 🏃

And I usually end up choosing to "freeze."

When I think about moving next month and get anxious, I freeze.

Even when I start thinking about something negative, I cannot even manage to run away properly, and I just stay frozen in place.

So from now on, when I get anxious, I want to try asking myself: "Am I fighting this right now?" "Am I running away?" "Or am I freezing?"

I gained one more option to ask myself. Just that alone felt like a small win. 🙂‍↕️