I was standing on a dark quiet road in Berlin. It was late. I was alone. For the first time in my adult life I wasn't running through exit strategies in my head. I wasn't mapping the space, cataloguing who was near me, calculating what could go wrong and how fast I could move if it did. I was just standing there. On a road. In the dark. In a foreign country where I spoke just enough of the language that I could get a coffee or beer and a bite to eat. And I felt safe. The thou

"By the time I finished I could think again." Painting as Anxiety Management I have high functioning anxiety. It's rooted in PTSD from experiences I've written about elsewhere and won't repeat here. What matters for this post is what I've found that works. Painting works. Not in a vague wellness way. Specifically and mechanically. When my nervous system is dysregulated, when the anxiety is running and the thoughts are circular and nothing is resolving, picking up a brush forc