Success Induced Anxiety Part II

So this is something that has been happening to me more frequently as I start to get a better handle on my emotional highs and lows: I'm now getting anxiety over feeling happy.
As someone who has struggled with anxiety for half of his life, I believe it is absolutely fair for me to qualify feeling happy or enjoying myself as a kind of success.

I think the reason I have become anxious over feeling happy is because that particular feeling is often so unfamiliar to me. Ergo unfamiliarity equates to uncertainty, and uncertainty leads to anxiety. I can't properly express how awful this is.

Times like these make me hate being me. OK, so I don't even get to have one good day without crashing down? Thanks anxiety, I really appreciate that, you dick.
Today, it just crept up on me. From about half past ten this morning, I felt that tightening in my chest, the knots in my stomach. The general sense of dread and discomfort. My brain wasn't racing like it usually does when anxiety hits hard, but that feeling of total unease with myself, where I was and what I was doing crashed into me like a tsunami.
And I'm fairly confident that this is a reaction to the fact that earlier this week, I had the audacity to have a brilliant day out with a friend.

At the risk of sounding like a petulant child, that's not fair. That's not fair at all.
If my anxious behaviors are a learned response to different stimuli, then that means I've somehow trained my brain to react to happiness and positivity with crushing negativity. WHY WOULD I DO THAT?!
It's not something I consciously chose, but I've obviously gotten so used to feeling down that my brain defaults to anxiety and self hate after having anything resembling a good time. That doesn't help me progress in my life at all. It's like there's an expectation of negativity: sure you had one good day, but remember all of the bad ones you've had, all of your failures in the past and how you always revert back into negativity? It's like my brain is punishing me for being hopeful. As though planning to put more positivity in my life is something I should suffer for.

When I feel this way, particularly as badly as I'm feeling right now, the best option really isn't for me to soldier on though it. It might seem like giving in, but I have to call time on this fight. Anxiety has won, so today is a write off. Maybe I'll listen to music, maybe I'll try playing some videogames. But sometimes I have to just accept the reality that there are some battles I can't win. When my mind indulges this level of negativity, I just have to shut down and hope that tomorrow I don't feel the way I feel right now.
My anxiety is already telling me that I won't be able to sleep, I won't be rested for my day tomorrow, people will see how shitty I look and feel and will want to avoid me - on and on with this wall of noise. It's like being stuck in the bottom of a well and people keep pouring water in. Eventually you'll drown, but you could have sworn you left a rope here to climb out somewhere. You don't even remember how you got into the well in the first place, and come to think of it, you don't understand why you'd want to be in there anyway. But the water keeps coming and you're still stuck.

I know it's just one bad day. But today I can't see the light at the top of the well and I can't find my way back out. The more anxious I feel, the more I start to beat myself over how I'm feeling. It's such a vicious cycle. And it's one I'm tired of spinning around on.

There's a part of my brain that feels so vulnerable and scared when anxiety hits hard. There's a little voice just screaming for some love and affection. As though a cuddle and some words of reassurance could help me through. Whilst that would be lovely, I don't want to develop emotional dependency on others. Mentally healthy folk don't require external validation to function, it's usually just a bonus of any good relationship. Ugh. Please be quiet, brain.

Can you see why it's best to just write some days off? It's so hard to stop thinking, spiralling off into self destructive behaviours and self criticism.

Today is a day that I'd really rather not be me.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Thanks for reading.