Ugh

Tonight I had a melt down. The first one in a few weeks. So of course now I am thinking that I’m going to be seriously down with anxiety again for another six months, when the truth is that it was just a minor set back and I will be fine tomorrow and the next day…and the day after…but you know, reality and logical thinking aren’t really things we consider when we are in the throes of anxiety.

I was asked to babysit my nephew overnight. I was asked a few months ago, and the date was supposed to be for tonight. Well, of course, a few months ago I thought I’d be feeling great by now and things would be easier and I’d feel up to it. So I said yes. Then, my sister who lives here with me realized she didn’t have a sitter for her almost two year old daughter tonight either. It was kind of announced to me a few weeks ago that I’d be having both kids overnight tonight.

I started feeling really pressured and taken advantage of. I tried to make myself clear without being aggressive, but that didn’t work very well and I backed down and agreed to do it in the end. When tonight came though, there was no way. I was anxiety ridden all day today and even yesterday I was having some issues just thinking about tonight. Two hours after I picked my nephew up, I took him back to his mom, bawling and hysterical the entire time, convinced my sister would never forgive me and be really mad at me and my life would be over.

She did, she wasn’t, and it isn’t.

I blew things way out of proportion. Now I am sitting here at home in my pjs wondering if I could have kept my nephew after all. I feel like an idiot, I feel like my anxiety won out tonight, but in the end I don’t really know what I would have done differently to avoid this ending.

What should I have done?

Well one thing I know is that I should have been more assertive and made it clear that keeping both babies overnight is too much for me right now, no matter how I felt when I originally agreed to the deal.

The second thing I know is that I should have not waited until the last minute to analyze what I was feeling. I should have had a plan in place for how to deal with tonight. I should have prepared myself mentally and emotionally.

But the truth is that I thought this would be no big deal and everything would be great. So another thing I learned was that I need to prepare even for things I think are going to be good and easy.

I am so tired, so drained…I hope I can sleep tonight. Lately I have been having so many problems sleeping that I’ve been awake all night and slept all morning, which always gives me a sleep hangover and makes me feel sick to my stomach. It also seems to add to my depression. When I was going to bed at nine and waking up at six I felt so good. I really need to get back to that schedule.

But now, I am starting to have huge amounts of anxiety about sleeping at all. I have been dreaming and having nightmares and I hate HATE HATE that more than anything. I hate feeling out of control of myself, and how do you control yourself while you’re asleep???!!!

Well enough random rambling, I am off to get a drink and go to bed. Updates later.

Significance Journaling For Anxiety

In my quest to have a fulfilling life, I usually find myself crafting in one way or another. I sew, I quilt, I write, I make things. A project that’s been hovering around the edges of my brain lately is making a recycled journal to write in daily. I was thinking about using a lot of unlined paper and a lot of white space to make the journal; I’ve found that it’s easier for me to take notes on totally blank paper then it is to use lined paper (I’m not sure why, this is just a personal preference. I’m not trying to dog lined paper by any means, lol.) It seems more freeing and less restrictive, and I like to doodle all over so it looks a little better without those blue lines behind everything.

Anyway, I was on youtube this morning looking at different ways to make journals, different book binding techniques, etc. I came across this video about Significance Journaling that really sparked my interest. It’s something I’ve never heard of before, but it instantly made sense.

The gist of it is that every day, you write down something significant that you accomplished during that day. It doesn’t have to be a world changing event. But it’s also not just a regular diary entry where you gripe about how much work you had to do and how the day made you feel. It’s just a simple list of important things that you did that day that you want to remember.

How does this tie in with anxiety?

All too often, those of us who suffer with anxiety beat ourselves up one side and down the other about all the ways we’ve failed in the past, are failing right now, and will fail in the future. We are never good enough for ourselves. Nothing we do is valuable, because we are so busy worrying about what we used to do wrong, are doing wrong, or may do wrong in the future, that our present moment loses any value that it deserves.

Forcing yourself to step back and look at your day from an outsider’s point of view and search for the important task(s) you accomplished will change your point of view about yourself.

It’s another twist on the whole idea of talking positively to yourself and being your own best friend. And when you take the time to sit and think about it, then write it out, then reread it later, you are being kind and loving to yourself.

In my journal (which I will be making today at some point if all goes as plans) I intend to have a Significant Accomplishment section, a Gratitude section and a diary section. I think it will help me to be more organized with my thoughts and more aware of what I’m feeling, which can only make life better, right?

Here’s an example of what my entry for today will look like:

Gratitude Journal – I am so grateful for the sunshine outside my window! After a week of rain, it is refreshing to see the blue sky and hear the birds. My garden has even begun to grow again, so I am grateful for the fresh rain as well. Also, I am grateful that my sisters trust me with their babies. Baby laughs are contagious. They make me smile.

Significance Journal – Today I hugged my daughter and told her I loved her when she crawled out of bed. This is significant to me because it never happened during my childhood. I am being the kind of mom I want to be.

So, what about you? What are you grateful for today? What Significant things did you accomplish today?

Something that helps me

Something that helps me deal with anxiety is crocheting. In the last two days I’ve made three dish clothes and learned two new stitches. (There would be pictures if I wasn’t tired tonight. Maybe I’ll edit this and add them over the next few days.) I’ve found that repitive motions, like using a crochet hook and yarn over and over, really relaxes my head and helps me sort things out. It seems to bring an inner calm.

What works for you when you are stressed?

Oh, and a quick PS – a LOT of people recommend working out to deal with things. I fully intend to implement that technique in the future. Right now, anything I do that raises my heart rate too much has been really scaring me, triggering the I’m having a heart attack train and effectively destroying any benefits from the work out itself. I have been doing yoga poses and slowly working my way back up to a full work out over the last week.

So comment and tell me what helps you so we can all try it!

Anticipation…oh boy, how fun

I have been doing pretty well the last few weeks with my anxiety, although I haven’t been blogging about it because I have been busy trying to catch up on real life and learning how to deal with every day things again. I have had some residual chest pains, stomach problems and moments of high anxiety, but they are outweighed by the strides I’m making – I’m able to drive alone comfortably now, go into busy places without panicking, even sit for a few hours in a group of people and not disintegrate. It was starting to feel rather surreal – I would do something that used to panic me, then sit and wait for the panic to strike, and when it didn’t, I would think, “Wow, I’m really getting better.” I was starting to trust myself again. I was starting to get confidence back and even missed a few counseling sessions to try to test myself and see how much progress I was able to make alone.

As some of you may remember, I lost my babysitting job about three months ago. It happened right as I started the descent back into an anxiety-ridden, panic-attack mess, and was one of the triggers that really set everything off.

Yesterday I got a mini-bomb dropped on me when my brother showed up to drop off my nephew for a job interview he had to go to. I was surprised but happy to see them, of course, since I love my baby boy and and was glad to spend time with him. But after the interview my brother just announced (without asking me, mind you) that he was going to be working the night shift, so he’d bring the baby to me in the mornings, hang out with us for a few hours, then go home and go to sleep and leave the baby with me until my sister was able to pick him up in the late afternoon when she got off work.

It’s not that I don’t want to babysit again. It’s not even that I wasn’t asked, but just told. It’s just that I feel like I didn’t accomplish anything in the three months since I last worked, and now my life is going to be going through another massive upheaval dealing with the baby and setting up new routines, and I just odn’t know if I can handle the stress without getting sick again. I AM doing better, but really, it’s only been about three weeks since I’ve even been able to eat properly; I don’t want another relapse, and I don’t want the feelings of anxiety that go with it!

Last night after they left I really started having bad anticipatory anxiety. I was what-iffing myself to death and almost worked myself into a full blown panic attack over it. My hands started going numb, I threw up, I was sweating and shaking and irritable. It was really terrible. I even became my own worst enemy, because instead of dealing with what I was feeling I started fighting against it, when just gave it more strength. In the end I stayed up all night and then realized this morning how ridiculous I was being.

I started talking to myself in a nice way and working through things. It went something like this.

“No one can make me babysit if I don’t want to. I am a person who has the right to say no. If my family gets upset they will forgive me because they love me anyway. And even if they stay upset, Frankie sees my point of view and will not be angry with me. I’m just avoiding confrontation because it scares me to be out of control and risk losing things. I will be okay.”

“I am fully capable of being a good babysitter. I am responsible and smart. I can handle whatever may come up. It was fun to babysit him in the past. If I choose to do so again, it could be really fun and I might enjoy it.”

“I can take him places with me. Working again does not mean I am stuck at home. Being stuck at home would not mean I am going to relapse.”

“I have a right to an opinion that’s different than everyone else’s and I have the right to make myself heard. I am lovable anyway.”

I didn’t take the time to write all of these down (well, until just now) but just thinking about my options and telling myself I am not stuck or trapped helped so, so much. I feel a lot better now. I was feeling like I was losing control to the anxiety and the situation, which of course made me feel even more scared. Now that I realize I have control and am not a victim of what happens to me, I feel much better, stronger and more in control.

I have had some help in learning to think this way, and two posts in particular went through my mind this morning. this post has some great advice for how to view your anxiety and deal with it. This is a ten step mental exercise plan that helps tremendously, especially step #9. I use this exercise more than anything else, including what I’ve learned in CBT and other counseling sessions. Read it, apply it, memorize it, and use it…it can help, I promise.

Those are my wonderful words of wisdom for today, hope it helped someone!

Gratitude Journal #1

This is an exercise in being grateful. You’re supposed to do it every day. I highly doubt I will be organized or dedicated enough to do it every day, but here’s hoping, right? lol. Anyway, the goal is to write three things you’re grateful for and why you’re grateful for them.

Enough dawdling…let’s begin, shall we?

#1) I am grateful that my mother in law came through her emergency surgery last night. Yes, she might look really beat up and recovery seems miles away right now, but the important thing is that she’s still around to look like anything and recover at all. And the bright side of this is that maybe now she will be able to recover fully from the lung operation in June and get back to feeling good and enjoying life.

#2) I am grateful for my husband’s hugs and his warm smile and his voice. In fact, I’m grateful for every minute I get to spend with him. He is gone a lot and his job is dangerous. Sometimes I forget how much he means to me, especially when I get caught up in all the negative parts of daily life. But he really does give the best bear hugs ever. I am very grateful for him.

#3) I am grateful for…I could go with the obvious and say my daughter. But the truth is that I’m not grateful for just my daughter in general. I am grateful to see her little heart is so full of love and hope. I am grateful to watch her little brain literally expanding with knowledge, and to see her growing up and becoming her own person. She is my greatest accomplishment ever!

Okay, this was mushy gushy but fun to write and it made my heart feel a lot lighter tonight. Maybe this isn’t such a bad idea!

A daily schedule…of sorts

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?

Judge not, unless you want to be shocked…

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!

Notes from the Back Office

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!

Just a short update

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.

A great link

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!