Therapy Assignment: Feeling Too Much vs. Feeling Too Little

 Write about feeling too much vs. feeling too little. Is there a healthy balance? Is feeling tense normal and ok? How do I feel comfortable with some normal anxiety?

Getting Comfortable With Feeling

I got an assignment from my therapist this week to write about feeling too much vs. feeling too little. Can I find a healthy balance? I admitted to him that sometimes I want to be medicated to such an extent that I don’t feel any anxiety at all; I’ve been known to beg my psychiatrist for a benzo script from time to time, which he always refuses (and thank God for that).

 Subsequently I’m trying to tease out how I can find comfort feeling some normal anxiety, accepting that sometimes feeling tense is normal and ok. My psychiatrist has told me he’s not going to knock out all my anxiety with too much medicine, so I’ve got to learn how to live with some tension. So I’m trying to do things like turning to exercise to manage my anxiety breakthroughs. I’m having some success with that. I’m also using the meditation app Insight Timer, which has proven to help.

I know I don’t want to be a zombie, I want to be feeling something. Just not feeling too much, and by that I mean not going down the rabbit hole of obsessive anxious rumination over catastrophic future scenarios. I think the anxiety medication I take now is effectively controlling my obsessive thoughts. So now I’m left with some tension which I’m beginning to realize is not a bad thing.

I think what I need to do is plan more activities into my days. That way when I’m feeling some tension I have something to distract me, or rather keep me occupied. Or maybe there’s some way I can take the tension and turn it into something positive, like a creative project of some kind. In other words, can I work with the tension, the feelings, in such a way that I get a benefit?

One thing I know is that I am an addict that likes to numb all tension and turn it into something pleasurable. So maybe I need to look at this in another way, just sitting with feelings, whether comfortable or not. Not trying to do anything to change them, rather just existing with them. Maybe that’s where some balance can be found?