It’s not about the weight. Even though everyone says I don’t need to, I find myself constantly worrying about my body image or about the fact that I indulged in those unneeded sugar cookies a few hours ago. However, for the hour and a half, I spend exercising, it is not about the weight. It is not about what I ate earlier that day or about the small pudge of my stomach that is being shown when I wear a crop top.

Realistically, I’m a pretty damn anxious and somewhat overbearing person. Yet I couldn’t be more okay with that. I’ve never been one to deny the fact that my anxiety gets the better of me nor have I ever been the one to do anything about this. However, with exercising, I find myself more focused, preoccupied and dealing with my shit than ever.

If I go to the gym in a bad mood, I allow myself to deal with it through my exercises and stay fucking mad. I workout that angry quite literally with the help of a workout. And even though I know when I leave the gym I will still be angry and not facing my anger, an hour and a half of dealing with it is at least something right?

I don’t even fully understand why, but I have this feeling of being in control when on an elliptical or a treadmill, or when I’m using those random arm and leg machines. This may sound funny to say, but the gym is the one place where I feel I have absolutely nothing to be anxious about.

When focusing on the workouts I’m doing, I’m not anxious about my grades, about what I eat, or about what other people think of me. Yes, I still look at the number of calories I just burned as my legs are movings at a fast pace on the elliptical. At the moment, the amount of calories that I have been killing does concern me, yet it doesn’t manage to consume me.

I like to think that due to the fact that I am either listening to some form pop music from 2008 or watching an episode of “FRIENDS” while doing a workout, I see the gym as my “anxiety-free time.” There’s simply something about having upbeat music when you are running or lifting that changes your whole mood.

It makes you feel ten times more motivated than you did when you first stepped into the gym and for me, as I heard my favorite song continue to play, I am just more and more encouraged to keep thriving through a workout. I never thought I would say that the gym is my safe haven, but that is what it sounds like.

Even though I know exercising can’t fix with my anxiety, it has been helping me cope with it greatly. In a way, these workouts feel like therapy to me. The way I think of it is, I’m forcing myself to go to the gym and be less anxious, instead of just sitting around doing nothing but knowing I will get anxious. Maybe other people have these perspectives too? Or maybe it’s just me? Or maybe people have always felt the same way as me about the gym but just don’t connect it to their mentality?

About eleven minutes after I exit the gym and that feeling of satisfaction has faded away, the feelings of anxiety that I get continue to roll on. Probably because I feel like now I have to go back into reality and be surrounded by all the things I can’t control. The worry about what I’ve eaten or am going to eat returns. I continue to be anxious about who likes me and who doesn’t and what thing I could do wrong tomorrow.

Sounds stupid? Sorry, it’s not me, it’s my anxiety, but in the end, my anxiety is me.

No, I don’t spend every minute outside of the gym feeling anxious, it is just that the gym is the on place where I know I’m not anxious and is a place where I can power through that anxiety. I’m not saying that everyone should go to the gym to deal with the anxiety blah blah; just don’t know it till you try it.