Day 786: High Anxiety

I’m having a little high anxiety writing this post this morning, because I don’t want to be late for the second day of my group psychotherapy conference.

I don’t know about you, but I can have very high anxiety about being late, especially for something like a therapy group, where being on time is

• expected,
• important, and
• affects many other people.

Am I alone in this high anxiety about being late? What can trigger high (or other levels of) anxiety in you?

The San Francisco Hotel I need to reach on time, this morning,  also caused high anxiety for Mel Brooks in High Anxiety, as you can see in the movie trailer I found on YouTube:

Here are some photos I took yesterday, at that “High Anxiety” Hotel:

 

I had some High Anxiety at The High Anxiety Hotel yesterday, because:

1. I’m afraid of heights,
2. I revealed some vulnerable and sensitive information about myself in a therapy group of people I had just met, and
3. I talked about my recently higher anxiety about my very unusual heart, including the likelihood of heart surgery in the near future.

My anxiety might have been high at times yesterday (especially when the changing light in the group room made it temporarily difficult for me to see the faces of the other people), but it was also bearable, because

1. the other people in my therapy group also revealed vulnerable, sensitive, and important things about themselves,
2. people offered helpful feedback about each others’ anxieties (and other things),
3. I learned a lot about my anxiety, including how to trust others more fully, and
4. I met up, during the lunch break, with a former student of mine, who works next door to the High Anxiety Hotel:

That’s Chris, who previously appeared in this blog post from last year and whose friendly, smiling presence is good for reducing anxiety.  I told Chris — as I’m telling everybody else around here — that I am sick of my High Anxiety about the high snows and low temperatures in my home town of Boston during the winters.  My proposed cure for that high anxiety?  Moving, within the next couple of years, to the home town of the High Anxiety Hotel — San Francisco.

I captured that on-high shot of San Francisco last night, after the conference, from the building next door to the High Anxiety Hotel.  I had very low anxiety when I snapped that because

• coincidences don’t scare me, and Chris and my long-time friend Lawry coincidentally work in that same building,
• I had dramatically lowered my high anxiety by talking about it in the therapy group,
• beautiful and warm locations are natural anxiety reducers for me, and
• I’m pretty good at helping people (including myself) move from high anxiety to low anxiety.

What about you?  Is your anxiety high, medium, low, or non-existent? What tends to make your low anxiety high and your high anxiety lower?

Do I have any anxiety about what music to choose for this post? Well, I’m letting go of any anxiety I might have about repeating music I’ve posted before (see here), so I’ll share this with you again:

The theme music from High Anxiety — written and sung by the incomparable, anxiety-reducing Mel Brooks — is here on YouTube.

Okay!  I’ve got to go face a day of low, medium, and/or high anxiety, along with many other people.

Thanks to the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, to all those attending the group psychotherapy conference there, to Mel Brooks, to Chris, to Lawry, and to you (of course!), whether you’re feeling high, low, or in between today.