I recently got out of a meditation. I started to realize something about my particular anxiety problem.

Growing up, I had to be told what to do. I was a lazy kid. Doing anything like homework or chores was basically out of the question. But as I got older, I started to feel the consequences more and more. The social ostracizing, the disappointment of my parents and teachers. I decided that I needed to become more type A.

In high school and college, I started to become more academic and take care of myself. I actually was able to go from a C/D student to a straight A student in the gifted programs. 

But I realized that what I was doing was actually being really hard on myself. I started to internalize the fear of going back to the bad student and child I was in grade school. 

Now as an adult with a partner and a home, I’ve found that this motivation I built isn’t sustainable for my mental health. 

(Side note: to be fair it wasn’t pleasant for me in college either, but I had a vibrant enough social life that I could bottle it away and ignore it.)

I tend to think of everyday as avoiding obstacles rather than just not sweating the small stuff. I tend to overthink how much time a task will take. I tend to look at the clock constantly when I have free time dreading the inevitable obstacle that will come.

It also has made me very hard on myself. Everything I do, I second guess myself and that’s not fair to me.

I don’t need to constantly remind myself of my past failures. I learned. I’m never going to be perfect and make everyone happy all the time.

My motivation does not need to come from my fear of relapsing to my former child self. 

I don’t know where I go from here, but hopefully I start to really get some more relief in the future.