I never thought of myself as a particularly anxious person. Mainly because the idea of anxiety was something very visible and pronounced. It turns out that I just have become very good at managing my anxiety, rather than it not existing.
But in recent weeks I’ve been noticing how much unattended anxiety I’ve actually had. I don’t think this is something I’ve always had, but it’s certainly built up in the last few months. These haven’t been particularly noticeable (both to other people and myself) because my way of demonstrating anxiety is far less visible. Rather than having a visible panic attack, I tend to retreat inwards and disassociate from my body.
One of the benefits of actually listening to the anxiety rather than trying to manage it is that I’ve become a lot more cognisant of my intuition around social interactions.