Anxiety and Negative Self-Talk in the New Year

We are only 15 days into the new year and I’ve already failed, or at least that’s what my brain keeps telling me.

Going into 2020 I had all these plans, just like everyone else, for the new and improved me. I was going to work out more and eat better. Save money. Eat out less. Start reading again. Stay on top of my blog post and make better content. Embark on all those projects I keep saying I’m going to do, but never even start.

It’s January 15 and I have not changed a single thing.

But what I haven’t shared is that I rang in the New Year with a fever of 101. I was supposed to work New Year’s Eve and I only made it halfway through the day before I had to go home. I came home, changed into some sweats, wrapped up in a blanket and slept through probably 75% of the night.

My husband and I had planned an epic meal of lobster, steak and crab legs to ring in the new year, which you may have seen me share on my Instagram. I didn’t want to ruin my husband’s New Year’s Eve so we continued with that plan, but I was so stuffed up and drugged up on cough syrup I barely tasted anything.

I spent New Year’s Day in bed.

By January 2, I was well enough…sort of…to go back to work, but I was still always freezing and had a cough that wouldn’t stop. For most of the first week of this year, all I could manage to do was work and sleep. If I had made plans with anyone I still kept my commitment, but I would stay in bed until the absolute last minute and as soon as I came back home I’d fall right back asleep.

This past week, my cough finally started to wear off, unless it gets too cold, then I could barely breathe at all, and I stopped sleeping “12” hours a day, but I’d been so sick since New Year’s piles of mail, and dishes, and dirty clothes awaited me.

This weekend I thought I finally had my shit together and my husband and I decided to try our luck on a 1-mile hike.

It killed me.

I got back home and literally thought I was right back to square one again with whatever nasty cold I had. I was freezing and coughing and EXHAUSTED. I passed out for nearly 3 hours.

Luckily it wasn’t my illness coming back, I had just pushed myself too hard, to fast and I had exhausted my body. After my three-hour nap and some pho, I felt semi-normal again.

Despite all this and through all this, my brain each and every day has told me I am a failure. It has told me that I am going to spend this year the exact same way I spent 2019. It has been telling me that all those goals meant nothing because I hadn’t started a single one.

On the surface and at face value, I know this isn’t true. I know I have had legitimate reasons why things haven’t been started, but my brain can be brutal. It always has been.

90% of the reason I don’t do things, start things, or try new things, is because my brain tells me I’ve failed before I’ve even started. And I’ve always struggled with overcoming that. It’s one of the biggest things I want to work on this year, that self-doubt and negative self-talk. My crippling anxiety and my fear of failure that keeps me from attempting to do the things or sharing the stories I want.

So here I am. My first step in trying to overcome that. I wasn’t sure if I should even share this, but this negative self-talk and self-doubt really triggered my fear to write again, at least this time around. Despite being sick, I had in my head things I wanted to write, stories and thoughts I wanted to share. And every day this week I have sat down to write them and nothing would come.

Finally, my husband told me to forget all that and to share what’s been going on and what is going on in my head. He encouraged me to share my struggles and internal monologue. And oddly enough this entire post came together really easy. I’m scared to death of publishing something this honest right after publishing another very honest piece, but I’m going to just suck it up and hit publish. Hopefully, it will hush the fear for at least a bit; and hopefully, now that this is all out in the open I can start to get to work on all the other pieces floating around in my head.