It’s the Holidays Again!

It’s the Monday before Thanksgiving and I feel really, really anxious. My family is coming and I am happy to be seeing them.  But I have “holiday generalized anxiety” and feel parallized. I just want to hide under my covers until it is over.  Obviously that approach is not workable.  So back to basics.  First, a body scan.  In doing this I realized that I am freaked out that I will have to talk to people.   I begin to image that I was driving my “anxiety bus” down a road and the bus is filled with all my fears about interacting with people.   Then I see my “anxiety bus” has three choices of roads to go down.  The road on the right was full of light, the middle one was sort of dark and the road on the left was totally in darkness.  I was drawn to the darkness but tried imaging going down the lighted road.  I saw trees and flowers.  Gradually I realized I could go down that road.   Suddenly my body felt more relaxed.  With a clearer head I realize that this week I need to live one hour at a time.  After all, I can stand just about anything for an hour.  Everything passes eventually…