When things keep randomly popping up in my life, sometimes it feels like they’re knocking at the door.
I’ve come to believe there is a strange power in choosing something ‘random’. I first remember noticing this in one of my first therapy sessions when I was just a teenager. At one point during the session I was asked to respond to certain body parts with a colour. I told the therapist – look, I have no idea, this makes no sense to me. I kept on protesting at what I perceived to be a nonsensical exercise and eventually said ‘fine, I’m just going to say completely random colours then’. Fine. Turns out my colours weren’t random at all, and I had perfectly matched up the colours that represented injuries and all sorts of other things with the correct body parts.
It’s extremely difficult to be truly random, and I’ve come to believe that when we think we’re being random, all we’re doing is putting our rational brain to a side and letting our subconscious decide. It’s non verbal, so we don’t know why it’s choosing what it’s choosing, but it definitely has its reasons.
A couple of weeks ago I was talking to my girlfriend and giving her one of my famous analogies. I think we were talking about mushrooms, supplements and placebos – I don’t remember the exact context, but for the purposes of my analogy I found myself trying to come up with a completely random supplement – magnesium was the first thing my brain spat out. Knock.
Right after the conversation she went off to have a call with a friend of hers who also suffers from anxiety. After the call she told me they had been talking about me and about anxiety and that her friend mentioned he had recently started taking magnesium and that it had been really helping him. She speaks to him very regularly, but this was the first time I ever got an anxiety recommendation. Knock knock.
That same week I had booked an appointment with a naturopath, as another attempt in my anxiety combating research journey. After a very extensive questionnaire about my life and a discussion about my difficulty with anxiety, she gave me a variety of interesting recommendations, mostly around diet and constructing a healthy routine. As magnesium and supplements were already on my mind, when at the end of the session she asked me whether I had any questions, I asked her whether there were any supplements she would recommend I take. She only said one thing, you guessed it. Knock, knock, knock.
So how is it that this supplement I’ve never taken or even ever heard of helping with anxiety, is suddenly screaming at me from all directions?I did some more research online and found that reddit is full of people sharing how magnesium completely fixed or at least really helped with their anxiety. I didn’t need any further convincing. I took my first tablet of magnesium citrate 200mg and within just a few minutes I felt an effect. It felt so calming and relaxing. It honestly reminded me a bit of what I remember xanax feeling like. I don’t mean this in a bad way and I’m also not saying it’s just a sedative. I felt calmer, but I also noticed the ripples in how I felt throughout the day. It just seemed to have built up a bit of a barrier protecting me from anxious triggers. I felt safer, and more confident going out into the world, even doing things that I would sometimes find a bit anxiety provoking.
So what is magnesium doing? Why would it help with anxiety? It seems it ‘feeds’ your nervous system and helps to regulate it. You can picture your highly strung, overworked, oversensitive nervous system suddenly getting the nutrition it needs and calming down. After all, magnesium is advertised as a muscle relaxant, it helps people sleep, so I guess this makes sense. Please be aware that magnesium citrate is apparently also used or at least known for its slight laxative effect. Not something I’ve noticed, but it may be subjective and/or depend on the dose. The nutritionist recommended magnesium bisglycinate, so I’ll be trying that too and reporting back on the differences.
I’ve been taking 200mg magnesium citrate right after breakfast and after dinner for the last week or two and I can honestly say it’s one of the most helpful things I’ve tried. It really makes a very noticeable difference. I hope it does for you too!
This doesn’t solve the root cause of severe anxiety, which is usually traumatic, and stored deeply in our minds and core beliefs. While my goal is ultimately to completely solve it, it’s still very nice to find something simple and safe that at least alleviates the daily symptoms and allows me to claw back a bit of my quality of life. I picture this journey in levels. The first level is simply getting my basic day to day life under control and being able to do most things without anxiety being too much of an impediment. Only once I’m past level one would I have the mental and physical capacity to really dig deeper and try to solve the level two issues and beyond.