reframing thoughts

I went to a restaurant to have lunch yesterday. It's been a while, and I was feeling nervous about it for days beforehand. In light of that, I think it went really well. I was able to keep pretty calm before and throughout the meal. After I finished eating, I felt (or imagined I felt) a little queasy, and then I was anxious for a while. This was during the drive home. I kept mentioning to my wife that I felt sick. Yes, repeatedly, because it's not enough to just mention it once, right? She kept telling me to rephrase what I was saying, telling me that it was better to say "I don't feel well" than to say "I feel sick." In the moment, with the anxiety and whatever the physical feeling was, I was exasperated by this. It seemed like it didn't matter what words I used, the situation was still horrible. The whole "just semantics" argument that doesn't make any sense because the words a person chooses do matter.

It reminds me of a quote from Cormac McCarthy's The Road: "Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that." You can change the way you think, and by doing so, you can change your entire perspective. You are always in control of that. The idea of this scares me, because right now I am not that skilled in using the control to my advantage. Telling myself and others that "I feel sick" is almost as bad as saying "I am sick" or "I must be sick" when I'm not (which I've done many times). With this phobia, I really need to keep a clear head when it comes to the word "sick."

Pretty much all of these statements should be avoided: "I feel sick," "I am sick," "I must be sick," "I feel like I'm going to throw up," "I feel nauseous," etc. They are all going to be inaccurate or exaggerations most of the time, and they will only heighten the anxiety. There are so many other statements to use in their place: "I feel anxious," "I feel full," "I feel digestion," "I feel hunger." Sometimes I don't want to use these more accurate statements just because it feels like it trivializes the very serious / intense worry I have in that moment. And it will trivialize it. But not in the sense of you having a huge problem and the rest of the world not noticing or caring. The worry itself will start to become trivial so that it doesn't affect you as much. Just from you making the effort to use the most accurate / truthful words possible. And if none of the "true statements" seem true to you, go with the most optimistic one that you can imagine being possible.