I doubt any of my methods of dealing with anxiety are all that healthy, actually. Right now, for example, I'm freaking out in the anxious manner and being 100% unproductive: opening acad files with no purpose other than to close them without editing anything. Staring off into space happens a LOT and doesn't really help anything either. When I run (or rollerblade, or bike, etc) to change my mood, I tend to be in who-gives-a-damn mode, and I really don't give a damn where I am, what time of day it is, or anything else really. This would be healthy, being a lot of physical endurance activity, except that I tend to get myself in not-so-safe situations when doing so.
-Recently I went out biking, without a light, at 8pm (it was February, so it was well after dark). There were few lights, I had no clue how far I'd gone or had left to go to get back, nor did I particularly care, it was raining, windy, and cold. It was a fairly secluded area, so nothing really happened except I could hardly walk when I finally got back (about 2 hours later, having gone (when I looked it up), oddly enough, exactly 26.2 miles).
-This fall, down in Boston, I left the Fens area at 9:30pm, on rollerblades, headed in the general direction of the water, but didn't know how to get there and again didn't really care. If there was a red light, I'd just turn right simply so I could keep going. It occurred to me later that I'd heard a LOT of sketchy calls and whistles from dark corners, under overpasses, and in dark sketchy alleys (female alone at night = easy target?), but I didn't really notice then, nor give a damn. I ended up in (as a friend informed me later) Dorchester, which is apparently the worst area near Boston. I decided to head back, still in a terrible mood, and got myself about a mile or so into the USPS headquarters, which I'd thought was a bridge, before security freaked out and stopped me. That 'tollbooth' was actually an authorization booth that hadn't notice me going in. Going around the USPS, I got dead-ended into an empty parking lot, followed by a dude on a motorcycle, who ended up turning around and leaving. I got back around 11:15pm.
-I've gone walking through the bad section of Mission Hill with a visibly semi-broken arm in the evening (bad mood + needing to get back to campus + the ride (from the campus police) I was told would be there never showed up).
-I've gone running through the 'ghetto' of my rural town at dusk, 'ghetto' because sketchy people live there. Actually I've done that several times. Me = idiot. I've also almost been hit by a car while I was running, but that was all their fault, as it was broad daylight, sunny, I was about 6' off the road, and they were about 5' off the road.
Healthy way of dealing with anxiety? Sure. Until I finally get mugged/shot/run over/stabbed/raped/arrested/lost (more permanently)/otherwise harmed, it works. Usually. The most dangerous part of it is even if anything happened, if I'm not out of that anxious/depressy mode yet, I wouldn't even care.
Jam it back in, in the dark.
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