having named my anxiety, rather than just lumping it in as a depression symptom, means I can look at it as its own thing, which I've been doing some over the last coupe of years.

It doesn't work the way I thought it did.

When I'm feeling anxiety about something, I usually start by rolling my eyes, c'mon, jerkbrain, stop getting in the way. And then I make myself do the thing anyway.

I'm pretty sure that's making it worse. (continued)

Logic-brain looks at that and says, see, you did the Thing, and nothing bad happened! Hypothesis tested. Thing is safe. Stop worrying.

But anxiety-brain says: I did the thing and it felt *awful*. There was a knot in my stomach and I couldn't breathe right and that just felt terrible and please don't do that again. So next time it's time to do the thing then I feel *worse*, because anxiety-brain is ramping up the anxiety, don't do that, it's awful!

So that's how I end up crying, terrified, over things that I've done successfully, over and over again. I keep doing it and it keeps feeling worse. Anxiety-brain doesn't listen to logic, so muscling my way through the thing is only a good solution in the shortest of terms. (sometimes, I really just have to get the thing done and worry about the consequences later).

Other than medication, I don't have reliable ways of breaking this cycle.