Sometimes getting out of bed is hard.  I wake up with a debilitating lead weight feeling in my stomach. If I had to put a label on it, it would be danxiety. An emotional cocktail of feeling a bit down (so you only get the ‘D’ from the word depression) mixed with a shot of low-level anxiety.  It has stopped me going out and socialising, made me doubt myself a million times, and made me isolate at home on more occasions than I care to admit. I thought it was just my introversion, but a breakthrough session in the therapist’s chair, made me change my thinking.

Last Saturday morning, danxiety reared its familiar head. But this time rather than sit at home and wait for it to pass, I decided to go out anyway and take the feeling with me. I spoke to myself, like a nurturing friend, saying things like; get out of bed, have a shower, brush your teeth, pick up the phone. It was literally as step-by-step as that. After 30 minutes of gentle self-persuasion, I was in the park dog by my side off to meet a friend for a leisurely walk. Are you really an introvert? Or are your isolation tendencies just ‘danxiety‘ in disguise?