Dealing with my Anxious Brain

Last week my Anxious Brain threw a temper tantrum. Everything in my life was being filtered, the way a dog recognizes only a few words of your conversation with him. My Anxious Brain disregards the entirety of many sentences, and tends to reframe whole concepts in a bizarre attempt to undermine my Logical Brain. Something like this:  "Do you think you can make this deadline?" turns into "We are pretty sure you are not going to be able to meet this deadline." Someone saying to me "Sure, I'd like to see you later." turns into "You are so needy, I guess I have to show up for you even though I have better things to do." Anxious Brain also hears a phrase like "not now" and holds on to the "not" part... words like "maybe" can be a trigger... and silence -- like those silent dog whistles? Yeah, Anxious Brain latches on to that as well. I've used the analogy of Anxious Brain Dog for myself for a while. If I catch the dog soon enough, before it grabs onto a piece of negativity, I can shove a treat in its face and we all move on. If I don't catch it... well... it retrieves every percieved bit of self-esteem crushing information and just rolls around in it... which every dog owner can imagine <insert disgusting pile of whatever your dog rolls in while you uselessly yell at it>...

This sketch was part of my coping mechanism last weekend.