 Welcome to the anxious morning every weekday morning will take a few minutes to go over important lessons that you can use in your anxiety recovery journey The anxious morning brings you support education inspiration encouragement and empowerment Read or listen quietly on your own time free of the endless noisy scroll of social media Use the information to help you along the path to recovery from panic disorder Agoraphobia and other anxiety problems for more visit us at the anxious morning comm Stoic philosophy is something that speaks to me more than that You can draw a direct line from the words of the great Stoics to the emergence of cognitive behavioral therapy in the 1950s and 60s Once in a while, I'll bring some of that here for discussion Seneca said there is nothing the busy man is less busy with than living There is nothing harder to learn Seneca is reminding us here to be mindful of where we are placing our attention and expending our energy Are we staying busy or are we actually living? For many people busy is taking precedence over living most of the time Anxious people are no exception. Your anxiety is likely keeping you cemented in the busy zone But what does busy look like for us? To the rest of the world anxious avoidant people don't look busy at all an Anxious person may spend most of the time at home or in a limited number of safe places doing a limited number of safe things But this person is nonetheless busy in a different way This anxious person is occupied during every waking moment by thinking scanning evaluating guarding dreading remembering and anticipating This hidden busyness of the mind is exhausting it will suck all of the air out of the room all the time Anxious busyness can also be clear and obvious for some anxious people being busy becomes a purpose all on its own Hurrying from task to task and place to place in an attempt to outrun thoughts emotions and anxiety symptoms Makes them some of the busiest people on the planet though not necessarily the most productive for obvious reasons Choosing to be overtly and literally busy during every waking minute as an escape and avoidant strategy is also quite exhausting and all-consuming Where then is the space for this living that Seneca is concerned about? What does living even mean for us in the context of anxiety recovery? We can interpret living as the act of engaging with the things we want to do Moving toward and embracing the things that matter and hold value to us without regard to fear or anxiety In an anxious state this represents a challenge Doing normal things at a normal pace will induce discomfort So often the anxious person will choose to retreat from these challenges Remaining anxiously busy rather than actually living becomes the default Seneca recognizes this universal human challenge when he tells us that living is the hardest thing to learn If you are stuck in a state of anxious busyness Longing to actually live your life do not despair. You are not alone Your predicament does not indicate that you are broken or unfixable. You are delightfully human in this respect For the anxious person the challenge of learning to live may be more literal and basic in its actions But at its core is the same challenge we all face from time to time throughout our lives Take a few minutes today to consider how you may be choosing anxious busyness over living What does that look like in your life? What would living look like in comparison? What steps can you take however small to start that can start to move you from busy to alive? Tomorrow we'll talk about the idea of meditating against the grain Hey, if you're enjoying the podcast and you'd like to get a copy of it delivered every morning into your email inbox Including a full text transcription head on over to the anxious morning dot email and sign up for the newsletter And if you're listening on iTunes or Spotify or someplace where you can leave us a rating or review Take a moment and rate the podcast and maybe write a small review. It really helps us out or just tell a friend about us Thanks a lot