Welcome to MyAnxiousMind, my personal journey living with an Anxiety disorder.
NEW VISITORS
If you are a new visitor to this site, I highly recommend that you read My Story first. This will give you the background of who I am and how I got here.
If you are interested in reading my online journal, a history of my daily life living with anxiety, then it is highly recommended that you read it in chronological order, starting with March 2008.
Every night I die and every morning I’m born again.
Each day is a struggle to accept my illness and relax. It seems that I struggle through the day, trying hard to enjoy the day while I battle, and finally near the end of the day I have accepted my lot in life and I am over come with a feeling of calmness and peace. This brief glimpse that happens for but a few short hours at the end of the day is the life I remember and the life I want to return to. At this time I feel great, like I can do anything, I have all the confidence in the world but I know, and perhaps that is the problem, that by morning it will be gone and I will awake nervous and scared, afraid to face the world.
During the last session I had with my psychologist, he make a remark that he believes the majority of my anxiety is caused and kept alive by a lack of self-confidence. I at first didn’t buy that observation after all I’ve been known to wear crazy hair styles, not care about what people think about how I dress, and not worry a single second about being able to provide financially for my family. However the more I thought about it the more I knew he was right.
If I were to take a step back and observe my life from a distance I would say that the person I was looking at was successful and talented but why do I struggle so much to see that about myself? When complimented on my achievements and talents, I am quick to change the conversion or minimize my abilities. I do this with my own internal conversations as well. For example, this morning on the drive into work I was listening to NPR. There was a quick blurb about President Bush’s farewell tour through Europe. I immediately said to myself “there is no way you could ever be president!!!” not that I’m not smart enough or that I lack social skills but that I would never be able to survive the grind of world travel and endless meetings. Hell, by the end of a normal 8 hour work day I want to climb into my bed and escape.
I’ve been recognizing this behavior in myself everyday since the doctor made his observations. Watching a basketball game on TV, no way I could be a commentator, scoreboard operator, ball boy. I’m not sure where this comes from, I’ve been successful in most things I’ve done in my life yet I feel like a failure. I think the doctor is right, I do lack self-confidence, I lack the confidence that my legs will carry me from my car to my office, I lack the confidence that I will ever find my true calling in life, I lack the confidence that I will ever recover.
I’m not sure how to fix this problem but this week I will focus my energies on building confidence.
I like to believe that I am making progress, that I am getting better, that I am recovering from this illness. However at times, I find it very hard to believe. I like to think that I’m getting better but maybe I am just fooling myself, telling myself what I want to hear, what I want to believe. It’s so hard to see the progress I’ve made as I’m so caught up with being inside myself, always examining myself.
I guess it’s like a parent with a young child, you are with them so many hours a day, you find it difficult to see and appreciate the amazing changes they are going through every day. However when Grandma comes over, having been away for a month or more, she is quick to point out how much they have grown, the new talents they have picked up, and how quickly time flies by.
Perhaps I am fooling myself, perhaps I am telling myself what I want to believe but maybe that is ok, for without hope, what do we have?
This week has been a real challenge for me. My anxiety levels have been higher than they have been when compared to recent weeks and I have an overwhelming feeling of despair. The prior three weeks had me on a bit of a high, sure my anxiety was still there and every time I walked into a restaurant my hands would sweat uncontrollably but I was sensing a light at the end of the tunnel and I wasn’t avoiding as I had done so many times in the past.
The downside of this natural high was that I stopped doing all the things that got me on that high. I stopped doing my homework assignments, the daily mood log and the daily mood survey, I stopped doing yoga, I stopped exercising — I was returning to my old, sedentary lifestyle. The side effects of these changes didn’t kick in immediately but I started to notice day by day the return of symptoms that had been dormant, lack of energy, feelings of impending doom, and the dreaded “weirdness”.
I must accept that I won’t change over-night, this must be a long term commitment and I must continue to be active in my recovery and not think that one good day excuses me from all future tests.
It seems that when I have those great days where I feel like there is a light at the end of the tunnel, they are so often followed up with days of hopelessness and despair. It is in these moments that the balance of life is so fragile, it would be so easy to just give in and fall. When I am like this my mind tells me “just stay in bed, what do you think you will accomplish today? If I choose A or B, both are wrong and nothing will really ever change.”
Right now I have several things going on that I think add to this sense of hopelessness. In the near future, I will be forced to make several decisions about my future employment. I am also helping a friend deal with a particularly stressful time. And I face the daily battle of making the choice to do or avoid — do I go to the family party or do I stay home?
When the perfect storm of elements come together, I slip into a state of what I call “The Weirdness”. This state can be best described as living in a waking dream state. I’m so focused inward, that the outside world starts to look foreign and surreal. This state scares me. I guess clinically it would be called Depersonalization, although this is not a constant state and I have never been diagnosed as having this disorder.
Back when I would spend the majority of my day searching the Internet for information, I came across a trailer for a movie called Numb that does a great job visualizing what this state of “Weirdness” is like.
Logically you would think that having a day free of anxiety would make the next day anxiety free as well, however this rarely is the case for me. The day after an anxiety free day is filled with an extreme amount of anxiety and pressure to be as good or better than the day before. “I felt so great yesterday, today I’m going to feel even better.” That pressure to be better than yesterday puts me on a slippery slope to disaster. With the first thing that goes wrong, I quickly start to question everything. “Yesterday was a fluke, I’m bound to be sick forever.”
On days like these it is important for me to remember to:
This time last year, I was cuddled up in my bed, feeling ashamed, depressed, and sad that my kids were growing up and I wasn’t a part of it. I was held up in my bedroom while my kids were down at a local park for the city Easter egg hunt. I wanted to go so badly but just couldn’t force myself from my bed.
I told myself that I would feel better if I skipped this activity. The crowds of people were sure to throw me into an instant panic attack. However just the opposite happened, being alone with my thoughts, I continually attacked myself for being weak and for letting life pass me by.
Today I was excited to get up and go. There was no way I was going to miss the Easter egg hunt this year. There were a few moments of “what if” thinking as we approached the park but today I felt different, I felt like I could do anything. I stood calmly and watched as my kids hunted for eggs with smiles on their faces. This is life, this is what I have been missing.
Overcoming an anxiety disorder takes time, patience, support and a plan. My person plan looks something like this:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has become an integral part of my treatment program. CBT is a psychotherapy technique that aims to modify cognitive distortions, assumptions, beliefs, and behaviors.
One of the CBT tools that my doctor strongly recommends is called the “Daily Mood Log”. This journal technique is a structured method for making note of negative thoughts as they relate to an upsetting event. With each negative thought, the patient is challenged to identify the cognitive distortions that are present in each thought and then asked to rewrite each negative thought as a positive thought.
The cognitive distortions that seem to be most present in my negative thoughts are:
Once you have taken a moment to rewrite each negative as a positive, you then reevaluate your current beliefs. How much do I believe the new positive thought vs. how much do I still believe the old negative thought.
My doctor asked that I do this exercise at least once a day for 6 straight weeks, which I have done. I find that I am now starting to do this exercise automatically in my head. However, it is important to note that I needed the structure of putting it down on paper at first to reinforce the habbit. It was and still is very beneficial to have these thoughts in written form so that I can go back and reflect on where I was and how far I have come.
The following is a copy of a Daily Mood Log entry I completed on January 27, 2008.
