Thank you so much, Holly. I have talked to my psychiatrist and she is prescribing medication, but I am afraid to take the medication because it's a benzodiazepine and I'm taking an opioid for pain related to a car accident I had a few months ago. So I'm anxious about taking medication for my anxiety.

Which is the whole problem, really. I am actually in Exposure and Response Prevention therapy (ERP) to deal with my harm OCD thoughts (I've talked about those before), but lately it's become all about regular anxieties and I have so many! That's the therapist who kept asking me what my anxiety thoughts are, and she, too, mentioned breaking it down into smaller steps. Like last week I had anxiety about putting leftovers into the freezer and she asked me to break down the steps it would take to do that- get the plastic bag, open the fridge, pull out the leftovers, grab a fork, etc. She wanted me to see which step I felt most anxious at but there wasn't a step, there was just anxiety and avoidance.

I'm so anxious I can't even do my exposures, the ones at home anyway, which is where most of them need to be done.