Erin is the writer of Daisies and Bruises, a blog about "finding her way one step and one word at a time. After losing most of her youth to severe depression, she decided that since death was no longer an option, she had to find a way to live. This is it."

Anxiety can give you energy, that’s why people bite their nails or drum their fingers or bounce their legs. Doing something physical to expel that energy makes anxiety easier to tolerate. How do you channel that energy into something healthy? I think by already looking at what we do we can learn a lot about how we already cope well.

By the age we had to sit in desks daily at school I became nervous that everyone was staring at me if I had no one to talk to. I quickly became accustomed to finishing homework if I had nothing else to do but sometimes I didn’t have homework. Reading was an escape of mine but sometimes I accidentally left a book at home. That’s when I started to write. It didn’t matter what I was writing, my peers naturally thought I was working and left me alone. I started to write as if I had an imaginary friend, someone to talk to who wouldn’t judge me. I soon found that that friend was in fact, myself. Even if I was writing down negative thoughts, beating myself up, something in me felt at home when I wrote.

Just before grade six, the Harriet the Spy movie came out and I naturally had to read the book, too. I was drawn to its quirkiness and style, as well as Harriet chronically writing. I began to carry around a notebook all the time and now fifteen years later, I still do. I can write no matter where I am and it’s actually one of my main coping skills when it comes to being in public. I can write about what I hear and see  to slow my thoughts down and ground myself or I can write about other things to escape.

Is it any wonder that I write a blog today? Not only does writing give me a hobby it has also provided me with a goal: to be published.  I want to make a living off of my survival skill. Anxiety has deprived me of so much in my life that it’s time I turned it around. I am making it work for me instead of against me. It’s always going to be there, but fighting it takes up a lot of energy. Writing is my way of turning around on my enemy and saying, “Okay, let’s have a truce. You can speed up my heart rate, make me breathe shallowly, and make me worry, but I am not going to let you make me panic.  Instead of turning the inside of my head into a massive game of dodge ball, let’s have those thoughts slink down my neck to my arm and out through this pen.”

So far it’s working. It isn’t a cure to my anxiety but it’s a damn good way to keep afloat when I’m feeling like I’m drowning. It’s great that my coping skill is something that could lead to a career, but I think any coping skill is productive, whether you can make money from it or not. Even if you are the absolutely best at the video game on your smart phone, and you can’t win anything for your high score, you still are finding a way to get that nervous energy out of your body and into something constructive. What do you do that keeps you afloat?

-by Erin