Cristina Zenato

Cristina Zenato Instagram – Dear anxiety: an open conversation about a factor in many people’s lives
It’s early morning, and my phone is receiving a lot of messages from different parts of the world; the messages explain the current feelings about mental health and the concerns related to diving.
Anxiety, excitement, expectations, and self-judgment, we can add more names to it, are part of many people involved in this industry.
It is brought on by goals we set for ourselves that we feel we cannot achieve, by the expectations of perfection, by the comparison we conduct by scrolling through others’ accounts, feeling they have it all sorted out and we don’t.
When we put ourselves at the edge of our comfort zone and try to go beyond it, it’s normal to have some uncomfortable feelings; if we didn’t have them, it would mean the mind is not reading itself for the obstacles ahead of us. But in many cases, especially with certain personalities, we become very hard on ourselves; we set it for all, we want it perfect, and we put so much pressure to make it all happen we sometimes self-trigger these reactions. Provided that we had a very long time to work harder and better than our counterparts in these fields, it’s typical also to feel inadequate.
As I tell my students, everything I know is not by coincidence.
One of the ways I cope with the feeling is to acknowledge it, recognize the presence sitting at the table with me, and ask, “Why are you here?”
The simple fact of voicing the feeling over our shoulders makes the presence less threatening and the conversation open.
I then search for why that wave is coming over me and threatening to crash me. At times, it might be a painful process, but it is the same as a wound: once we find the source of the pain, we can work to remove it.
I have suffered from an overlap of work and relationship situations that brought massive anxiety levels into my life; once I recognized it, I was able to start the process. It was evident that I had to let go of both sources and jump feet-first into a new state.
It was interesting to notice with all the uncertainty and fear that the vast jump brought with it, my anxiety instantly dissolved. | Posted on 27/Feb/2024 18:04:20