I woke up with a headache after sleeping terribly. Usually when I wake in the night I read a random Wikipedia article in dark mode and it puts me back to sleep. If I don't read, I ruminate about any little thing that made me cringe at myself in the last day, month, year, life. Wikipedia puts my mind in a good place. Last night it put me to sleep, but the cringe was so strong it would leak in to my brain and wake me up. It must have happened 20 times before I finally fell asleep.
My job is casual and had been busy all fall and during Christmas, but the hours have fallen away for January and February. I will have a lot of time to do useful things like organising a heat pump being put in to replace our gas heating. The Canadian government is offering an interest free loan for greener heating, and so I will need to apply for that as well. It's all stuff that I am perfectly capable of doing. Anxiety hit me today, and this has all felt like too much.
It's so obvious now I've re-read the first and second paragraphs that I was just consumed by anxiety today. What is it that therapists say? Something like your emotions aren't you. Noticing anxiety as a separate entity from yourself is the first step to sorting it out.
The question is, do I drink to reduce my anxiety, or does the drinking cause anxious feelings? Not drinking should help me figure this out.