Hey friends, it's Rosie here.
Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Monday.
The other night I was lying in bed exhausted, but my brain wide awake.
I was doing what I like to call mental ping pong.
You know, bouncing between deadlines, texts I hadn't answered, something I'd said two days ago,
and a completely unnecessary hypothetical about what would happen if I forgot to set an alarm.
You know that feeling.
When your thoughts start looping and suddenly you're fully alert,
rehearsing future disasters or reliving past missteps, while everyone else is peacefully asleep.
Anxiety.
Many of us experience it.
But often, we don't talk about it in real time.
And I'm not talking about the buzzword version.
I'm talking about the real, messy,
sometimes paralyzing spiral that happens when your mind won't stop running.
And by naming it, honestly,
we give ourselves permission to move through it with more compassion and less shame.
I've struggled with anxiety most of my life.
But I didn't always have the language for it.
I grew up in East LA in the early 90s, surrounded by chaos,