“I wondered what you’d have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Coleslaw? Potato-strychnine mash?” – Robin McKinley
Having anxiety can lead to a lot of strange habits, often ones that are so involuntary that you don’t know you’re doing them. Despite this, it’s important to recognize what is stemming from anxiety to gauge how your anxiety is actually doing.
Here are a handful of weird habits that are because of anxiety:
- Excessive playing with your hair
- Having weird and vivid dreams
- Making all of the lists
- Not being able to sit still
- Picking at your skin
- Apologizing excessively
- Going to the bathroom a lot
- Constantly checking your phone
I know a lot of these can overlap with OCD or ADHD tendencies, but knowing people that deal with these ends up being all combined. We’re all a lovely cocktail of mental illnesses nowadays.
It’s empowering to know why you might deal with some of these things. If you don’t think you suffer from anxiety but you do everything on this list then you might have learned how to cope with it so well through these habits that you don’t feel it anymore.
That isn’t to say these habits are bad, but habits stem from something and if you want to break a habit you have to go to the root.
Being in control of your mental health is one of the best feelings out there and it’s one that I want everyone to be able to experience.