Welcome to the second installment of Self-Care Sunday for February. This week, we are talking all about The Mind. I will be sharing some tools and practices I have learned firsthand that help bring an overactive mind back to a place of balance and peace.

I find that it?s almost impossible to talk about The Mind without talking about my experience with anxiety. Anxiety is not a word or a condition I heard about growing up. It suddenly appeared as a concept in my 20s and never left. Anxiety has been one of my closest companions for the better part of two decades as a third party in my marriage?just me, my husband, and our old friend Anxiety.

At the beginning of our relationship, when my husband?s struggle with anxiety started to reveal itself as life and stress and responsibilities took over from the carefree days of our youth, I fought against it and the changes it would elicit to his normally calm demeanor. I fought hard. This anxious person was not the carefree, confident person I had met. The nervous energy between us that came on seemingly out of nowhere was?and still is?so uncomfortable to experience that I was desperate to do anything to make it disappear. Living with anxiety was not something I had signed up for.
At first, I got angry, and we argued about it. On my worst days, I tried to force or berate it out of my husband. We went to therapy together, which is where I learned that I wasn?t being very helpful. So then, wanting to do a better job (but not so secre...