Give it a name

Y'all probably have heard this before, but I was intrigued by something I read a few weeks ago about giving our emotions such as anxiety a name, like a real person's name. The theory behind this is that by giving a name to our anxiety we give it a personality and that allows us to feel a bit more detached from it -- in other words, our anxiety does not define us and we don't have to identify with it.

So, I gave it a try and named my anxiety, Anna (this was a friend who drove me crazy in high school with her constant annoyingness lol) and it has seemed to help. Yesterday, I was stressing out about a presentation I had to do and as I felt that anxiety creeping in, I kept repeating in my mind 'Anna is such an attention seeker, ignore her'. I know it might sound a bit strange to do this, but seriously, it helped me detach the anxiety from the situation and look at it from the perspective of this being a pattern that is trying to play out.

Honestly, for the first time, I felt like I could detach and move away from "Anna" instead of letting anxiety pull me under and ruin my focus on the presentation. I'm gonna keep trying to keep "Anna" out of the spotlight and see how this continues to work 😅

What would you name your anxiety and why would you choose that name?