Anxiety and Depression: The Not-So Dynamic Duo

Why do we have anxiety? Anxiety serves as a type of Lookout designed to look out for danger in our lives. Anxiety is the reason we look both ways before crossing a street or are hesitant to eat food that smells off. Anxiety, to some degree, explains why we are still alive. The issue occurs when anxiety gains too much control over our thoughts. Anxiety will always find 'danger' in our world, even if it is not really there or should not be listed as 'danger'. The more we listen to anxiety, the more it wiil find danger in our daily lives. Soon, danger exists everywhere, which is where things become concerning.

Imagine your mental energy as the battery symbol on your phone. The more time you allow anxiety to operate, the more energy it drains from your mental energy. It would be like watching a movie on your phone, the battery will drain before the end of the day. Same goes for a mind preoccupied with anxiety, you are mentally drained before lunch. That is when depression can seep in.

Depression is insidious because it uses your own inner voice to say very negative things. This can make it easier to believe, because it sounds like your own inner voice. For most of the time, we can ignore the negative comments or at least be able to counter them with a more realistic thought, when we have plenty of mental energy in our battery. If anxiety is draining your battery quickly, though, you will soon run out of resources to combat the negative self-talk.

Once you start listening to the negative thoughts,depression sets in. This is when anxiety and depression will develop a detrimental cycle in your mind. Anxiety will cause excessive worry about deadlines and also cause self-doubt about life choices. Self-doubt will be enforced by the negative self-talk letting you know, 'You're not good enough." Depression will keep you from engaging in life activities and anxiety will freak out that nothing is being done. Anxiety will drain your energy and depression will relish in your lack of ability to fight it off. Before you know it, you are in a serious mindset where you beat yourself up and stress out over most things.