I am going to tell you how to effectively cure your anxiety.

I often hear that anxiety is a common issue among furs.  If this is true, then effectively dealing with that anxiety would not only be very helpful to the individual, but to the fandom as a whole.  Curing a common disease will effectively rid the entire community of its effects.

Self-talk is a powerful tool.  You can use it to completely destroy your self-image, or to completely rebuild your view of the world.  You can use self-talk to manage and effectively cure your regular anxiety.  I spoke of self-talk in a past post.  If you haven’t read that post, you should go do that now.  It is going to be very important to this topic.

Self-talk is a tool that can clobber your sense of time and space.  It can whisk you away to an unknown, unstable, unpredictable future.  It can also ground you firmly in the present.  The best thing about self-talk – it is 100% in your control.  No one else can control or manipulate your self-talk.  It is a tool that is controlled by you alone.  That means you can manage its use.  You decide what it will be used for, and you decide when and where to use it.  You are in control.

Here is how you can use self-talk to deal with your anxiety.

Anxiety is by definition a feeling that is directly related to the unknown.  You feel anxiety when you image the future.  The future is by nature an unknown.  You cannot know what will happen in the future.  Your anxiety is cultivated and nurtured by dwelling on future events.  You talk to yourself regularly by saying, “Will they like me?”, “Will I get the job?”, “Will I get hurt?”, “Will I pass?”, “Will it work out the way I need it to?”  The questions – unanswerable questions – about the future are endless.  This feeds your anxiety like nothing else.  It is a 900 pound gorilla and it will never be satisfied.

To counter anxiety, you must alter your perspective.  You must become mindful.  Dwelling on the future is the opposite of being mindful.  To be mindful is to be firmly grounded in this very moment.  To become mindful, you use self-talk to refocus your attention away from the future to the present.  Do not say, “What will happen tomorrow?”  You should ask yourself, “Where am I right now?  What am I doing?  Why am I here?  How am I feeling?  What am I wearing?”

Being mindful is the act of focusing on every detail of your current moment.  You are using self-talk to ask yourself questions.  These questions are intended to make you think about this moment.  Asking yourself where you are will cause you to focus on the details of your surroundings.  Are you sitting at a table?  Are you standing in a corner?  Are you walking on a sidewalk?  What city are you in?  Questions like these cause you to focus on your location and the details of your environment.  Similarly, the other questions you ask yourself are meant to cause you to focus on the details of your person, or your purpose, or your individual senses.  All of these questions HAVE ANSWERS!  You KNOW what the answers are!  They are all known.  This is the polar opposite to the future.

The questions of the future cannot be known.  That is why they make you anxious.  Questions about the future feed your anxiety.  Questions about your present moment will starve your anxiety.  In fact, questions about your present moment will crush your anxiety.  Asking yourself these questions will derail you from your “but what about the future” train of thought.

This kind of self-talk does take practice.  But it is easy to try.  Try it.  The more you try it, the better you will get.  At first it will feel like a discipline.  It will not come easy to you.  You will have to make yourself do it.  But after a while, you will begin to develop a habit.  The most difficult part will be to realize when you are having that anxious mood and recognizing that it is the time to stop having those feelings and start engaging in the self-talk that will steer you away from your anxiety.  Imagine what your life would be like if you could turn off your anxiety at will.  Would that be useful to you?  Would you like that?

But how does this help the fandom?  How does this help your community?  If you have been reading my blog, you will not be surprised at the answer to those questions.  You cannot control what others do, but you can control what you do.  If you are working to manage your anxiety, your success is going to have a noticeable effect on everyone around you.  If many other furs are doing what you are doing, imagine how that could affect your local meet, group, event, community, etc.

Your efforts will be noticeable.  Others will be inspired by your results.  You are changing the fandom all by yourself!

-Sisyphus

I have more than one Twitter account.  Does that bother you?  Are you thinking that this is a deceptive practice?  There are personal advantages to having more than one account and they do not have anything to do with deception.

Our community thrives on diversity.  Every one of us brings something to the table.  We are all contributing to this community and making it better every day.  You do you.  That is what we are all about.  This makes our community a great asset.  We all need to be able to express ourselves.  It is essential to the human condition.  One of my accounts is typically used for political rhetoric.  This allows me to express my political beliefs.  I also find that my political account is a message to other furries who share my politics.  Somewhere out there are other furries who do not know that they can have their political views and their personal beliefs AND be a furry.  When they see my account, they will realize that is CAN be done.  For most people, all we need to know is that SOMEONE is doing it.  That is all the encouragement we need to engage in that same behavior.  Those furries out there who are afraid to get involved in the community because of their politics will be encouraged to get involved because they know they are not alone.  They will no longer be afraid to bring their personal beliefs, their skills, and their talents into the fandom.  That is a win for them, and for everyone else.

I have another account that has been thoroughly scrubbed of all politics.  No politics.  I use that account to follow books, authors, and speakers.  I generally stick to the topic of self-help and self-improvement.  My timeline is filled with motivation and positive reinforcement.  Much of it is hard truth, which may feel negative at first, but once you take a moment to consider the content, you realize how beneficial it is.  This account is more about who I want to become.  In a sense, I have created a mentor from my own imagination.  When deciding what accounts to follow, or which tweets to forward, I ask myself, “Would this person follow this account, or retweet this post?”  This helps me to flesh out my character, while exposing me to the advantages of “being” that person.

Image the person you want to be.  Do you want to be more compassionate?  Do you want to live a healthier life style?  Do you want to be more personable?  Do you want to be more spiritual?  Do you want to explore the idea of God more thoroughly?  Image what that person’s Twitter account would look like.  What accounts would they follow?  What tweets would they make, or repost?  Imagine how that Twitter feed would look, then go and create it.  Become that person!

Would this new person bring anything positive to our community?  How does this person enhance you?  This will tell you how they can contribute to the community.  Remember that even one positive, energetic person can change the attitude of an entire room.  You can learn the best parts of this new mentor that you created.  This new you can in turn improve your inner circle.  Your inner circle will in turn improve the community.

You can improve the community by creating a new Twitter account based on the ideal person that you wish to become.

-Sisyphus

Yesterday I brought my dog to the vet to have her euthanized.

Missy was 12 years old.  Over the last few weeks, she was starting to exhibit some unusual behaviors.  This included labored breathing, moving very slowly, and she had stopped eating.  She also had what looked like a large gland swelling up on her neck, under her chin.  The vet was able to confirm that the cause was cancer.

I wasn’t particularly surprised.  We took this dog in when she was already 10 years old.  Her original owner was living in a memory care facility, because he had Alzheimer’s.  When the disease progressed to the point where he could not care for her any more, his family was informed that they needed to remove the dog.  The family could not take the dog, so my wife and I decided to take her in.  We did that because we knew that no one would adopt her from a shelter.  Sending her to a shelter would have been a death sentence.

From a purely practical standpoint, it made no sense to take in an old dog.  There was no logical reason for this.  We knew the dog would not be around much longer.  We also knew that we were essentially inheriting whatever illnesses this dog may have, or incur, during the last years of her life.  But the decision was not practical.  We didn’t use any logic.  It was purely emotional.

Taking in an old dog was an opportunity to practice compassion through charity.  It is true that it is just a dog, but the act still affects the soul of the doer.  The truth is, this old dog gave us the opportunity to improve ourselves in a profound way.  You don’t always get opportunities like this.  They can be rare.

She was a very lovable dog.  She was always calm and she got along well with our other dog.  She would even play for a few moments at a time – as her energy level allowed.  Her presence enhanced the mood of our home.  This was yet another benefit to having her around.

In her death, she provided us with another rare opportunity – the opportunity to experience death.  This may not sound like a good experience, but it is.  You may be able to articulate what death means, but you really cannot understand it until you have experienced it firsthand.  There are some lessons that you can only learn from death.  Consequently, there are some forms of personal growth that you can only achieve through death.  Death will make you stronger, because you have no choice but to endure it.  You can’t quit early, and you can’t opt out.  You can only endure.  You will make it through, because you have no choice.  As a result, you get stronger and become better equipped to deal with life.

On the surface, we took an old dog that was never going to be more than a burden to our assets.  In actuality, God blessed us with an opportunity to improve ourselves and the quality of our home.  She was a good dog.

Thank you, Missy.

-Sisyphus