This Works for Me
My Anxiety Relief Is a 5-Minute Scream Every Morning
How stimulus control can compartmentalize your worries and fears
My list of worries is long. Yours probably is, too. It contains all of my own issues: the impending visit with my accountant to do my taxes, the freelancer’s eternal anxiety of waiting for paychecks from clients, the logistics of where I’m moving when my lease ends, that thing where you replay every conversation you’ve ever had in your head and think about how you specifically said exactly the wrong thing in each interaction. But there are also the existential concerns. I know I’m not alone in feeling out of control and overwhelmed with the world right now; it’s impossible not to be.
So, I’ve been trying something new. I’ve been waking up early — earlier than usual for me, which is already quite early — to sit in the predawn blue silence and, for precisely five minutes, scream. Or cry. Or just sit there silently experiencing the entire spectrum of negative human emotion.
I used to do this as a kid. Not the screaming, but the sitting. After my parents’ divorce, when they sold our house with the swing set and the backyard and my mom moved us into an apartment complex, I woke up every morning around 5:00 with a stomachache and stared at the AM/FM…
