Why Free Floating Anxiety Drives Me Crazy

Do you ever have times in your life when everything is going great yet you just have this nagging feeling that impending doom is on the horizon? It’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You aren’t quite sure where the problem will come from, but you are convinced there will be a problem.

That is Free Floating Anxiety.

My personal belief is that we feel this way because we have had times in our past where life was humming along smoothly and we got hit with a negative life event out of the blue. You’ve probably had this experience a few times in your past.

What happens is that the memory of the good times along with the negative event gets intertwined. Then when you are in a good place emotionally that intertwined memory starts tugging on us. It is cautioning us not to get too wrapped up in the good events because something bad is on the horizon.

The anxiety can take over our emotional state in an effort to protect ourselves from further hurt if we allow it. I’ve seen happy relationships abruptly end because ‘it was too good to be true’. I have seen people do other self-sabotaging behaviors because of free floating anxiety.

So, what do you do when you are in this spot?

You talk about it with others, you journal about it and sooner or later you’ll be laughing about it. I have also found that exercise is a huge reliever. What you don’t do is give power to anxiety. Giving power to this feeling means you over-think why you are feeling this way.

For me, sometimes I just need to share with someone that my life is going great; yet I can feel in my bones that something bad is going to happen. What often happens is that the person will share that they know exactly what you feel like. It feels great to know that what you are feeling is not uncommon.

Several years ago I was going through a particularly bad period of anxiety and anytime I talked with one girlfriend about it she suggested I pamper myself with a candle-lit bubble-bath. We laugh now because I felt that my skin had permanent texture of a prune for the next few months; I was in the bathtub almost every night. I can tell you it worked … the warm water soaked up the anxiety and the candles calmed me down.

Today I remember what someone shared with me once. Keep focused on getting through today and know that this feeling will pass.

Take it a day at a time.