Ive always had severe anxiety most of my life, so everything I did I felt I did because the driving factor was anxiety - having to do something a certain way, talk a certain way etc...so I never understood the mindset of one who didn't have it.
I was out with one of my friends about a year or so ago in the mall and asked him, "What's the exact mindset of someone who doesn't have anxiety. We're in the middle of a shopping mall and there are dozens of people are around." And honestly, much to my surprise, he responded with "Nothing. I don't think of anything when I see this many people."
I absolutely could not wrap my head around that. Everything I knew, everything that my focus permitted was based around overthinking and over analyzing. Paralysis of analysis - I analyzed and over though everything to the point of becoming house-bound because of the nerves.
I genuinely did not know what he meant. The very situation of not overthinking has forever been absent in my head. It's never not happened. So I kept talking to him and was trying to understand until it was broken down for me:
Me: How are you suppose to shut your brain off? Is that even a thing?
Friend: When was the last time you thought about playing hopscotch?
Me: ??? 15-20 years?
Friend: Just like that
That was an eye-opening comment - "Just like that." To me, I was able to build off of that statement are give it more meaning to me.
So how do you do that? How are you suppose to shut your brain off? I've heard a lot of friends of mine try to site off some random motivational quotes to me (because at the time, like I said, house bound). No matter the quote, it didn't mean anything to me. It never helped my anxiety at all. Retrospectively, it actually added to it.
Let me put it this way, the more motivational quotes that I heard, the higher I felt like I needed to exceed - added to the stress and anxiety. It took me a few months to try to make what I said my own, so I came to the conclusion that motivation, personally, and I think this can be applied to most people as well, I binned the concept of motivation in favor of discipline. Discipline is a thing if beauty. I once coined, to that same friend : You can be motivated and not be disciplined, but you can't be disciplined and not be motivated. As long as your can train your discipline, you are a champion.
Training your discipline is so much easier than people think. Train good habits. Make things second nature for you. Take it slow. Where ever you're most comfortable.
Example: your house is a mess, and you can't find the motivation to clean it. Okay. That's totally fine. Little by little, spend 5 minutes cleaning up. Do not try to do everything all at once. You'll just make yourself overwhelmed (anxiety). Don't even make it a goal to finish the house in a day. Take your time and go at it at a comfortable pace. It doesn't take much effort. Just a little bit here and there. Persistency is key! And before you know it, it will be second nature to take out the trash and not delay it. It'll be done without even thinking about it. And once that happens, it will be great because that's progress.
If yours is as bad as mine was, medication isn't a bad option. People have a negative connotation about medicine and talking to somebody for some help and guidance. Between you, a counselor, and the meds, the only person who can change you is you. The most a counselor can do for you is guide you and make you aware. Beyond that, it's up to you. How bad do you want your anxiety to dissipate? Medication works the same way. It will give your the missing biochemistry, but you have to work with it - anti-depressants, same thing. It can feed you the biochemistry, but you have to work with it. As said before, take it slow. Go at your own pace. There's no room to start comparing and contrasting yourself with other people. You have traits that they wish they had. So don't think that they're better than you. They aren't. No one is.