Rhi Axtell – Writer

I give myself permission to have a cold the day after tomorrow.

– My journal, two days ago

I have a cold.

I have two choices:

1. Celebrate, because I have such a deep understand of my body’s needs that I knew the cold was coming.
2. Bury myself under a pile of blankets on the couch and continue watching re-runs of NCIS*.

I think I’ll do both.

*Still blown away by the amount of navy-based crime there seems to be in the US.

I knew I was going to get a cold today because this week has been a week of anxiety triggers. Let’s list them all out here, so I can see the intense control anxiety has over my life:

• I’ve had a dentist appointment – something I never cope well with, thanks to a traumatic experience in my childhood. The anxiety begins about a week before and is sustained across those seven days.
• A house inspection by the Landlord – cue frantic cleaning and money anxiety around the rent going up .
• An essay deadline – I re-wrote this essay about five times because of anxiety about failure.
• Friends came over -cue more frantic cleaning, also anxiety around cooking and being ‘entertaining’ to the point where I use up a lot of energy in a small amount of time.
• Today I am being a steward for a play in a theatre (while sniffing and coughing in a very pleasant and inviting way) – cue social anxiety and panic that I won’t understand what I am doing and look like a total plank.

Phew. That’s a lot.

So knowing that all these anxity triggers were coming, I took extra care of myself, right?

Ha. Ha. Ha. (cough). Ha. (sniff) No, of course not.

I have noticed that when I am anxious, I tend to not do the self-care things I have been doing on the days I feel fine. Isn’t that typical? I try to look after myself but only when I don’t need it the most.

I foresaw these anxiety triggers draining me and I knew my body was going to respond by making me catch a cold or be ill. Then look what arrived today, summoned from the depths of my sinuses – ta-dah!

Next time this happens, I hope I will double down on the self-care tactics, not avoid them and just feel miserable, like I did this week.

Hopefully I won’t get this many anxiety triggers in one week again, but life has a fun way of jumping out at you like that.

I hope you are all looking after yourselves. Don’t copy me, no matter how exciting that sounds. I’m going back to NCIS now.

See you next time.