The Anxious Extrovert
“I bond with others to give them hope” – Deepak Chopra
As I once told a friend, I like it when people anticipate their expectations to me. As a good anxious person, I fear the unknown and absolutely loathe not knowing your “hidden” agenda. I try to apply this to everything I do; whether is work or social, I always anticipate people will enjoy knowing the purpose of my conversation with them. For that same reason, let me introduce myself.
My name is Natasha Minguer and I live in beautiful Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. I, like most of you, are caught in the Covid-19 epidemic where the only thing I can do to help this go away sooner than later is stay home. In my normal life, I have a daily routine which I have created but that my work and life demanded. Now, the uncertainty of the current epidemic has given me the opportunity (but also the burden) of rearranging my priorities and my routine.
Let me be clear, the reason why I am doing this is because I felt pressured, coerced to some extent, to become fucking Albert Einstein meets Madam Curie in the upcoming months. For some reason, some felt the need to make sure the stress of “not accomplishing nothing” fell in my lap. For the past two weeks, I’ve been battling between exercise, reading, cooking, feeling guilty for watching Netflix and spending time on my phone. But let’s be honest, it all comes down to “why do I feel this way?” – Nobody wakes up and says “how can I make Natasha feel like a complete failure today?” (and if they do that’s on them, not me)
So, I decided to take a deeper look. And let me see if I can put this in words… IT IS FUCKING SCARY. Doing introspective work while not having other things to think about? I mean, I go to therapy at least once a week in my regular life, but then I leave my therapist’s office and I get back to it. Now, I finish my session and guess what? STILL HAVE TIME TO THINK ABOUT ALL OF THIS. As I said, it’s become clearer and clearer that the main thing that I need to take out of this is not figuring out how String Theory works but to work on myself. And the first thing on my list is ANXIETY. (Hi, you bastard)
According to the WHO, around 3.6% of the population live with an Anxiety Disorder and in America (the continent!) over 7.7% of the female population are reportedly to experience anxiety! If it’s so common… why aren’t we talking about it? JUST KIDDING. I’ve literally heard every woman I know talk about their anxiety. Main reason for this, though, my agenda if you will, is to let you know, I, like you, also experience anxiety. And if you’re like me, today’s world is not helping with that.
Over the course of the upcoming days, I will be introducing some of my notes to express how this pandemic is helping me. Yes, I said it. I will come out of this like a fucking Zen master. I will dedicate these weeks to work on my anxiety and I will make it my bitch… or my best friend, whatever. Because whether I like it or not, anxiety is part of my life and it feels like I can’t breathe sometimes but other times I can feel how the anxiety pushes me to be better, and I choose to focus on the latter.
Anyway, just as my homeboy Deepak told me on the meditation today (btw, download it, it’s super cool with Oprah – “Oprah and Deepak 21-Meditation Experience”) I will bond to connect with others. In order for me to make this true and from the heart, I need to remove ego and… yes, become vulnerable (“Noooo, the ego says people will laugh at me!” Fuck ego) So here it is, the first entry of “The Anxious Extrovert”. Hope anyone enjoys this, and if not, well, I don’t care.
As a last exercise, something that has worked wonders these past weeks is to write down 5 things I am grateful for. Literally anything:
1. My quinoa porridge I made for breakfast – freaking amazing
2. The playlist I heard while cleaning the kitchen
3. My cooking class with Rana
4. Making ghee for the first time
5. Taking a shower with boiling hot water
If you try this, let me know how you feel. After all, I literally have all the time in the world. Have fun and remember to keep safe!
Natasha Minguer