Well what the heck does that mean Spencer? Aren’t passengers the people who aren’t driving the car? How can you be driving your life and also be a passenger? Well, I feel like the different parts of my body are sort of all the passengers of the car that is Spencer. More than anything else, my internal monologue is like a different person watching and learning and critiquing myself. My anxiety, my happiness, my fear, my humor, it is all just a little inner-me telling my body how to react and what to do. That is what makes my anxiety so scary. It isn’t some omnipotent creature telling me I suck, it is myself. It isn’t someone or something else I can point a finger at, it feels so internally motivated that it makes it that much worse.
I can take this one of two ways, and I want to take it in a positive route. My anxiety is my inner monologue talking, but so are my good traits. When someone gives me a compliment or says something nice, my inner monologue repeats it to myself in my own voice too, so for just a short moment I feel at peace with myself. It feels like I spend 90% of the time I am awake being self critical, so that 10% of time feels wonderful. It makes me strive to make that percentage just a little bit bigger everyday. It is essentially a healthy version of an addiction. In this version the high is good for me and the rest is not. I am chasing the high of self confidence to avoid the low of crippling anxiety. I maintain a workout routine because I feel good about burning off calories and feel self loathing when I see my gut in the mirror. I call my friends and family because they sound so happy to hear me and so disappointed when it’s been too long. I aim for the highest of standards because it is elation or frustration. It’s an obsession for progression to avoid depression. It is trying to be happy so I don’t fall on my face, or at the very least make a sick rhyme like “obsession for progression to avoid depression”.
This is one of my shorter blogs, and I think that is fitting. There is no reason to write “I am anxious and have zero self confidence and my inner monologue is mostly me picking on myself” a million different ways, and the fix is something I am still very much working on. For once, I don’t have a million words to describe something. I have about half as much to say about why I like myself as I do most other topics. But I have more to say today than I did yesterday, and yesterday I had more than the day before that, and so on and so forth. I would never be able to climb out of the pit that was my self loathing in a short time, but I can at least always work towards making it better. That’s all for now.
Sincerely,
Just a guy talking to himself
Sunday Driving Pod 
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