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Sometimes, especially during a particularly clingy relapse with anxiety and panic, I find myself struggling to remember how to do the most basic daily things. What am I supposed to do with myself all day long? I will find myself asking over and over. It seems too hard to even think, let alone move, when I’m not sure what to think or what to move to do. Half the time it takes too long to make a decision on what to do, so I do nothing, and feel even worse and more guilty.
Today I came up with a plan.
My motto is, I can do anything for fifteen minutes. These are the areas I need to do something in for at least fifteen minutes a day:
Create – I always feel better when I’ve made something, anything, even just colored a picture or drawn a smiley face on a paper plate. Creativity is a release we all need in some form or another, and it doesn’t have to be in the form of a king sized quilt or a fifteen thousand page novel. The goal is fifteen minutes.
Clean When anxiety has you so frozen and immobile that you can’t move your foot in one direction in the other, your whole house can fall apart around you in a matter of days, or in my case, hours. Spending fifteen minutes picking up trash, rinsing off dishes and switching the dry clothes from the dryer to a basket and the wet ones to the dryer and the dirty ones to the wash, can ward of complete and utter chaos. It may not seem like much but fifteen minutes can make all the difference.
Declutter You can’t clean clutter. And nothing feels better than throwing a bag of trash that you’ve moved from one place to another in the dumpster for the final time. It’s freeing to get rid of the clutter and non-important things in our lives. It frees mental space as well.
Learn By learn, I mean, learn anything. I read my bible daily. This is where I get my ‘learn’ from. But I also watching National Geographic, read world history, learn to crochet or sew by hand…the main thing is to get your brain involved in something new and interesting. It’s better to pick a subject when you aren’t in the midst of a bad bout, when you can think a little easier about what you’d like to learn about; however, if you are in the middle of a bad spell with your anxiety, one of the best things to do to help yourself is learn about anxiety and panic disorders. If you are reading this I know you have the internet at your fingertips. Do research on your condition and look for ways to educate yourself about it. It is a comfortabling thing to be able to reassure yourself that your feelings and symptoms are normal and manageable.
Love Concentrate on improving one relationship in your day. It can be with your husband, child, pet, friend, whatever…as long as you focus on thinking about that relationship and how grateful you are to have it, it counts as loving. Take yourself out of your anxiety mode and just be in love, or loving, for a few minutes a day. It’s healthy.
Move Take a walk. Turn on music and dance. Bounce a ball with your kid. Just do something. Don’t do anything too strenous if you are having a lot of chest pains or an upset stomach from your anxiety; you can still wander slowly through your house, or in your yard if you’re able to, or use this time to sweep and mop or vacuum or dust. Whatever you choose to do, just move around and think about what you’re doing.
It sounds like something that is too simple too help and too difficult to begin. But I promise, it will get easier by the minute and the day, and help you out. Try it, and remember, it’s only fifteen minutes at a time…what can it hurt?
This weekend I was blessed with the opportunity to spend time with some of my great aunts and cousins. These are family members who all live in other states and were gathered this weekend to celebrate my great aunt and uncle’s 25th wedding anniversary. I wanted to go, I needed to go, but my anxiety reared its head and almost convinced me to skip it, by giving me these kinds of thoughts -These people are the exact opposite of everything I am – they are career driven, rich, and never make mistakes or say the wrong thing. We have nothing in common, so why should I go?
I forced myself to get dressed and the hubby and I drove over. During the drive, I felt like I was walking the Green Mile and was full of anxiety. When we first got there, everyone was in the back yard, sitting around chatting and drinking and eating, having a generally good time. I was uncomfortable at first but gradually I relaxed, by cracking some jokes and telling myself that they liked me no matter what. We had a great time. So great, in fact, that when everyone else got tired and went home, the two of us and my mother stayed to spend some quality time with my deceased grandmother’s sisters, Aunt M and Aunt J. Eventually they began to ask questions about my past, and my anxiety went through the roof. These are two extremely wealthy, refined women who put their pinkies up when they sip their tea; how were they going to react to hearing that I’d spent years as a pot smoking drunk just to avoid my anxiety, which I was sure neither of them even had?
“Mom and I had a huge fight and I ran away when I was sixteen.” (Let’s gloss over the fact that my mother kicked me out and drove me to my destination, then told everyone I’d disappeared. Let’s just not mention that.) “I moved in with my boyfriend who was really into drugs.” (Let’s not tell precisely which drugs he used. That’s not important. Keep as much dignity here as you can.) “I started this cycle of waking up and getting drunk and staying that way all day. I spent four years like that. I couldn’t function without alcohol running through my veins.”
I was expecting to see looks of horror or disbelief on their faces; instead, they were both nodding in understanding, prompting me to go on, listening attentively. When I started telling them about my panic attacks, which began when my daughter was six months old, and the continuing rise of my anxiety, they were both on board, non judgmental, not disappointed…it was astonishing. It was amazing, honestly.
And then, they started telling their own stories. Aunt M had faced such depression and anxiety that she’d ended up in the mental hospital for three days. She suffered from such agoraphobia that she stayed inside her house for three whole years. She had a therapist, too, and she took medicine too, and she even felt scared of telling of anyone in the family, just like me! Aunt J faced her own battles, on a slighter smaller scale, and knew exactly what we were talking about…and liked us anyway.
I was stunned beyond belief. If you would have put a group of people in a room and asked me to pick out which ones suffered with any kind of mental illness, these two would have been the ones that I pointed at and said, “I know for sure it’s not them.” It really rocked some of my most basic beliefs about the people in my life to see that my great aunts had been there and felt what I felt and suffered the same way. It also made me realize how secretive those of us with these kinds of issues can be.
I realized that I have been every bit as judgmental as I was terrified others would be of me. I am so busy keeping my secrets that I convince myself no one else has any of their own to guard. I don’t expect anyone to be perfect, but I was so busy yelling at myself that they are all better than I am, that I put them up on a pedestal and expected perfection from them. Of course I am afraid of being judged – if everyone is perfect, and I am scum of the earth, they aren’t going to love me or respect me, right?
That night taught me a lot, both about my family, and about my own perceptions and how I add to my anxiety in ways I haven’t been aware of until now. It’s time to step back and look at my own judgmental thoughts when I am in a social situation of any kind; be open and honest with the ideas I am having about others. Evaluate the chances that I am giving them the job of being perfect while demeaning my own worth, and feeling judged because I am judging them as well.
What about you? Are there people in your life whom you’ve given misplaced perfection to? Are there people who you are avoiding, or extremely uncomfortable around, because of what they might think of you? How much of that feeling is honestly true? What can you do to change your thinking about the situation?
Lesson for the day – change your mental tape, even the parts of it you are sure are set in stone. Change your thoughts and let the power of reality help you find balance in your thinking!
Okay, before I post this, I should put in a few qualifying statements in case any of you are coming of from Aimee’s forum and don’t know much about my life. For those of you who DO know, you can skip down to the interesting stuff.
Important things to know about my life -
I was raised in a very chaotic home with lots of emotional abuse and by a mother who preconditioned us to be afraid of EVERYTHING. I do mean EVERYTHING.
Said mother walked out on us when I was 18 and I kinda took over the mommy role for my three little sisters.
My mother is now very much a part of our lives, I love her to death and she is a close friend. Lots of people don’t see how we are still a family but truthfully we are more of a family now than we were before.
I moved out with an abusive meth head boyfriend when I was 16. Not the smartest thing to do.
My husband is an alcoholic who is constantly fighting his battle. He is my best friend and the love of my life so I am supportive and by his side for anything he needs.
I was diagnosed with PTSD, GAD, acute panic disorder and borderline OCD in 2003.
Cynthia is my therapists name.
Okay, I think that’s it…on with the good stuff!
I was running a little late today, which caused me a bit of anxiety as I drove the freeway into town and had to avoid road work and take back alleys and stuff to get around faster. I got to the office just fine but I was a little keyed up. Cynthia came out and took us back to a new office, a bigger one that I actually felt a bit uncomfortable in. Most of the time we are in little 10×10 rooms. This bigger space was difficult to get used to, but since I had DD with me, it was also nice; there was a play area where she was able to occupy herself most of the time and I didn’t have to be as guarded with my words as I usually am when she’s there.
Cynthia asked how I was and how my week had gone. I have her the rundown.
Monday sucked because I wasn’t sure what time to expect DH home, we had unexpected house guests for the day, I felt rushed with DD’s school work and unable to really concentrate on what needed to be done because of the way I was feeling. I was also left in charge of all the kids in the house that day (my 7 year old, my 2 year old neice and my 1 year old nephew) which was really challenging, considering I was tired and strung out from the anxiety.
Tuesday was a little easier than Monday but only by a few millimeters. I fought with one of my little sisters (an entire post on the reason why will probably be coming soon) and that always makes me sick.
I woke up Wednesday sick to my stomach, which my anxiety does to me when it’s really high, and that set the stage for the entire day. I was not so happy.
Today has been okay so far, although it’s noon and I’ve had nothing to eat or drink yet because I woke up feeling sick and haven’t had time to eat now that I’m a little more awake and feeling better.
Okay, back to the session.
This is making me anxious to post, so you’re gonna get the short version for right now. We basically talked about how my control issues are really coming in to play with my anxiety right now. I can’t control DH’s drinking, or my baby sister’s life, and I can’t plan for the unexpected when I don’t know to expect it, so it was all overwhelming.
I also have a huge mistrust of the world in general. We were raised to never depend on anyone because they might fail us; we never ate anything from strangers, or from half the people we knew, because my mom thought it could be contaminated in some way and make us sick. Being vulnerable is a huge trigger for me. So I don’t have many close friends. I also tend to not connect very well with people, since I am constantly putting a wall up between us, to keep from needing to trust them.
My goals this week are to let go of the control a little bit and to bring my level of mistrust of everything in general to a manageable level. These are also my two biggest triggers right now so we will see how things work out. I am excited to have a pinpointed reason for the way I’ve been feeling, and to know it is workable and that I can conquer it; but honestly, today’s session was the hardest one I’ve had in two months, and although I feel better and have hope, I am also still rolling a lot of it over in my mind. This blog entry probably seems really disjointed but that’s because that’s the way I am thinking right now I guess. I will try to smooth it out and repost other stuff later. I just didn’t want to forget anything which is why I am calling this “notes”. Thanks for reading!
I haven’t been posting because I’ve been too busy trying to just get by. My days and nights are all running together and today I have a horrid sinus headache. Anyone else notice that this happens to them when they don’t get enough sleep? It seems that I’m more susceptible to everything, especially panic and anxiety and headaches, when my sleep schedule goes hay wire.
Anyway – just a friendly reminder, this site is no longer private, anybody can see it and the comments that you guys post. If you want to email me privately let me know and I will send you my email address.
On another note, my big computer is down for the count right now, so I am using a borrowed lap top until I get mine going again. We are installing a third hard drive and upgrading to Vista and adding RAM, and by we, I mean mostly me; between homeschool, daily chore stuff and everything else going in my little world, there’s not a whole lot of room left over for working on the puter, so it may be a while before my posts are regular or full of pictures or anything. Be patient. It’s coming.
Speaking of which, I may be switching from this blog to a video blog as my primary blogging style. Any thoughts?
I’ve also cleaned up my other internet hot spots. I was sick of the drama of facebook, so I deleted my account. I can’t say anything important in less than 140 characters so I am also done with Twitter. I realize that I talk and type too much all at once, that things would be easier if I’d just post 140 characters at a time (lol) but that’s not gonna happen, so there ya go.
What else….um…I’ve been really active on the forum at The Realities of Anxiety (there’s a link in the post directly below this.) It’s awesome to know I’m not alone in what I go through! I have some cool insights to post when I have a quiet minute to organize my thoughts.
I guess that’s all the updates I have for right now. Pop back in soon. 
You know you really like reading my diary…which is what this is right now…lol.
In the spirit of changing this blog to be more related to what I’m going through with my anxiety, my first new post is actually a link to a great site. The Reality of Anxiety is a great help and a wonderful place to go read. It made me feel a whole lot less alone with all of my symptoms and is one of the only blogs I’ve seen that mentions difficulties with eating, which is something that’s really affected me this time around. Go read and enjoy!
