GB: Anxiety vs writer's block

I worry. I worry about money, about work, about my housing situation, about my family, my friends, my life (whether I'm living it right), my health, my decisions, my lack of decisions. I worry that life is passing me by, that I've not achieved enough, that I've failed in some integral way to be the person I was born to be. Whatver that might mean.

Worrying makes me sick, physically sick. I battle tiredness, aches that have no cause, a tightness and uneasiness that sleep doesn't soothe. A special diet combats the worst of my Irritible Bowel Syndrome symptoms, of which generally science has no explanation or cure, but the need to avoid common foods poses its own problems, and leads to further worry.

To combat my feelings of inadequacy, I make lists, I set goals, I announce to myself that I will achieve a certain milestone by a certain date or time. I fail to meet the objective. I lose interest. My thoughts disperse. My motivation wavers, flits away like a butterfly seeking pollen on a windy day.

Often I sit in one place, physically idle, my brain whirring like a fan set too fast. Without doing anything, I overheat.

Once I used to write in the 'zone'. Given a keyboard and a few minutes, the muse would snap like a taut spring and off I'd go. I would write for minutes or hours, ignorant of the passing of time. I lived in my mind, exposing thoughts to the screen without intent, with no more effort than to transcribe. I've not written in the zone for years. I thought it was writers block. I thought I'd run out of stories. I thought it was because I was taking things so seriously, but now I suspect it's anxiety.

I yearn for a stressless holiday, a quiet beach somewhere with a book, a friend, all meals catered for, all decisions made for me. The hardest thing I'd need to do is decide whether to lay on the banana lounge or the hammock, whether to swim or sleep, whether to lay on my back to stare at the clouds or on my stomach to watch sand particles dance and bounce.

I blame my financial situation. If i were debt free, or at least in a better financial situation than I'm in, my anxiety would be less. Would it? Really? Wouldn't I just find something else to worry about, like impending climate change catastrophe, or the widening gap between rich and poor, the terrible loss of life through war and violence, the suffering of all the innocence in the world, the inadequacy of my contribution, the passivity with which I step forward into each day?

Maybe I need medication. Maybe I need to reframe. Maybe I need to write each day, even when I don't want to, even when my stomach is knotted so tight that to even place one single word on the page would seem to be the trigger that results in my entire undoing. Maybe, just maybe, I think too much and write too little.

How does a person turn off their mind? How do they stop it from overheating?

They write.