MyAnxiousMind

I find that I am constantly telling myself “when I feel normal I will…..” but then I started thinking what does normal feel like? Will I know when I feel normal? I think this thinking is part of what is keeping me mentally ill. When I think about comparing normal to abnormal to this mess that I’ve got myself in, my mind freaks out and I start to feel weird. I don’t know if there is a normal but I do know I have been asking myself this question for a long time.

I remember as a child, starring in the mirror thinking, I wonder if I’m really here. Maybe I’m gone and everyone around me is just acting like I’m really there and I’m the only one that doesn’t know the truth. Its this feeling of “OH MY GOD, AM I HERE?” that really freaks me out.

With that said, I continue to push on, yesterday I played basketball for an hour and half, there were times when the weirdness came in and I told myself so what, and I kept playing. I’m tired of sitting around waiting for some big event that may or may not happen. If I’m going to die, I might as well go out doing the things I enjoy. Right?

It was November 2005 when this latest phase of anxiety/health anxiety began.  I laid in bed last night thinking about all the days gone by, 900+ days that I have not fully enjoyed because in the back of my mind I thought that each one of those days would be my last.  Looking back, those are 900 days I will never get back, 900 days that I could have enjoyed but didn’t.

I was almost at the point of tears last night, wondering how many birthdays will go by, how many events will go by, how many opportunities will go by.  When you are in the grips of fear, even if it is just in the back of your mind, you can’t be fully present.  Can you remember how life was as a care free child?  How enjoyable the simple things in life were?  I would love to be able to enjoy simple things like going grocery shopping or doing the dishes.  I want to be able to go out to eat with my family and truly enjoy it not just do it, not just be there physically but be there emotionally and until I can climb out of my mind I will never be fully present.

Everyone around me, my doctor, my friends, my family, tells me that I am doing great, I am making amazing progress but I just can’t see it in myself.  I wake up thinking, why can’t I get better?  Why am I not improving?  What do others see in me that I don’t?  I just want to be happy, that is all I really want.

When I first started seeing a psychologist I complained of the “Sunday Evening Terror”.  It was this feeling of complete fear of having to return to work the next morning.  This fear would typically set in around 3 in the afternoon, ruining the rest of the day.  At this point in my life, I was having daily panic attacks during the week, I would hold on for dear life to make it to the weekend so that I could have a bit of rest.  The weekends would consist of me locking myself inside my house, begging for more time to recuperate from the week before.  By Saturday morning I would begin to feel half human again, as long as I didn’t have to leave the house, and would enjoy being safe until the dreaded Sunday afternoon came along.

I would work myself up so much that my worst panic attacks would typically occur on my drive into work on Monday mornings, many times I would have to drive the back roads to work and other times the attacks would be so terrible I would turn around and return home citing an “upset stomach”.  I would lay in my bed feeling depressed and defeated.  Slowly the Sunday Terror began to creep out, it wouldn’t set in until 8 or 9 at night, then it wouldn’t come on until Monday morning upon waking, then not until I got in the car to drive to work and finally it was gone.

This overwhelming fear is gone but there are still Monday mornings when my anxiety is higher than normal.  For example today, not a Monday but still the first day back at work following the weekend, I just felt off, I felt the anxiety creeping back in.  I became so frustrated, 5 days of feeling great, a fantastic weekend, I had the upper hand and here it comes back in full force.  Am I going to pass out?  Do I have MS?  Maybe it is ALS this time.  Could it be Lyme Disease?

Eventually I had to tell myself it doesn’t matter what I have.  I have to stop playing the role of patient, of victim and start enjoying the moment, no matter what that moment is.  Although this sounds simple, it is far from it.  Especially when you go from having a wonderful day to the next day being full of  fear and doubt, thinking you will never get better.

So yes, I want to scream, I want to be upset but recovery takes time.  I am now having good days and bad, instead of good hours and bad, I am making progress and I can enjoy life with or without anxiety.

This weekend I have continued doing the things I have been doing, repetition is key. When I first started therapy, I struggled with the thought of having to do a task over and over again before I mastered it. For some reason, in my mind, once a task had been crossed off the list, I would be better.

I don’t know why this is logical, for someone recovering from knee surgery, just because they go to physical therapy one day and walk the stairs it doesn’t mean they are healed and are now 100%. However, my brain told me, once you go grocery shopping or once you sit down to a meal in a busy restaurant you will be cured.

I’ve had to learn from being knocked down many times that “doing it once” is not the magic bullet. Each day I’ve had to get up and face my fears, some days this was grueling, others I hardly noticed my anxiety at all.

So this weekend I have been grocery shopping, out to breakfast with my grandparents, played basketball with my son, went bike riding with my daughter and spent time cooking.

Last night I had a dream that I climbed one of the tall mountains that I can see from my front yard. As myself and a group of friends reached the base of the mountain, I informed them that I would be waiting for them at the bottom, in case anyone had to return, I would be there to keep them company.As my friends made their way around a corner and out of sight, I knew that I was holding myself back from something I really wanted to do, so I threw on my pack and with a burst of speed caught up to them. We climbed and laughed and enjoyed the beauty of nature that was all around us.

Soon we were standing on the summit of the mountain. We posed for photos, with the backdrop of the valley far below us. Not many words were said as I sat on the top of the mountain, looking out across the world but with that view, nothing needed to be.

For anyone who has gone on an extended hiking trip, caring a 50 pound pack on their back, can relate to the feeling that I had the other day. When you go for a long hike, caring a pack full of supplies, there is this near indescribable feeling you get as you slip the pack from your back as you walk into camp.

Last weekend, as I was having lunch at Costco with my family, I had the feeling that this pack, stuffed full of fears and worries and guilt and resentment and anxiety, was being lifted off of my back. I wish I knew what it was that was lifting this weight from me but the answer, when it comes to anxiety, is never really that simple.

The many months of therapy, exposure and hope is starting to really make a difference. As I have talked about before, I believe that the tension that I carry in my body, the tension created by anxiety, is a major factor in the physical symptoms that I feel, those symptoms create more anxiety which creates more tension, which creates more symptoms. As I began to face my fears, accept my illness and have hope, that tension slowly, over the course of about 6 weeks, began to lessen it’s tight grip on my body.

I still have many miles to go but I have hope and with hope, there is nothing I can not accomplish.

Developing a treatment plan is a critical step in the recovery from an anxiety disorder.  I struggled for years trying to treat myself, using self-help methods, diets, etc.  These methods were not bad or wrong but there was no structure to them, no support system in place.  It wasn’t until I sought professional help that I really began to make noticeable progress in my recovery from this awful disorder.

However, the greatest treatment plan in the world will have limited success without the addition of hope.  Although doctors and scientists don’t like to talk about things that can’t be measured, I’m a firm believer that a patients state of mind, call it hope, call it faith, plays a critical role in how well they recover.

I knew the steps I needed to take in order to gain control of my out-of-control anxiety, however it wasn’t until I began to accept, began to have faith that these steps would make me better that I began to make noticeable progress.  The mind is a very powerful thing and we have the choice to use it to our advantage or to our disadvantage.

As I move through this experience, I am slowly moving from a place where my daily thoughts were “when I get better I’ll do……” to “every day is a new opportunity to experience the beauty of life”.  I now have hope and that hope has given me life.

Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.

-Tao Te Ching

With news of Sen. Kennedy being diagnosed with a brain tumor my mind instantly went into overdrive.  Now I must make a decision, do I let this take me down, take away all the good feelings I’ve had the past week or do I learn from it and let it go.

Well, my initial reaction was to think to myself, yep this confirms it, I must have a brain tumor too however with the news came more information about brain tumors and my analytical mind kicked into gear.  Instead of focusing in the grim statistics regarding recovery, I saw that for this type of tumor, the most common in adults, approximately 9,000 Americans are diagnosed a year, that is 0.003% of the population. And brain tumors in general are most common in children under 8 and adults over 65, however they can occur at any age but again you have to look at the odds.

So, it seems to me that I have a better chance of:

•  Being Murdered - 0.005%
•  Having Identity Stolen - 0.5%
•  Injured While Shaving - 0.01%
•  Hurt Mowing the Lawn - 0.03%

I have concluded that if I could shut off the outside world 50% of my problems would be solved, the other 50% would be solved if I could shut off the world inside my mind but then what am I left with, nothing more than the thing I fear the most.

My mind is very susceptible to outside stimuli, I can’t shut it off, I can take steps to avoid particularly bad influences on me but I can’t shut out everything, so part of recovery must be retraining my mind how to respond to outside stimuli.

The Problem

Today I was looking through a report of how visitors found my site. There was one entry where a visitor typed in the phrase “i feel dizzy brain cancer”. HOLY SHIT! How did this person find my site with that phrase? Instantly I felt the panic start to well up within my body. Wait a minute, I feel a bit dizzy myself. I better run to Google and search “what does a brain tumor feel like?” Ok, I’m getting more paranoid. Maybe I should search “stubbed toe dizzy tumor cancer brain”. What am I doing to myself? Am I willing to through away all the progress I’ve made over this one moment in time? I’ve got to stop this madness. I’m sure I can put in any sort of search in Google and if I search deep enough I’m bound to find at least one link that mentions the possibility of cancer.

The Solution

Interesting, someone found my site looking for “brain cancer and dizzy”, they must have the same fears that I have. I hope by reading my site they don’t feel so alone.

Every time we go shopping at Costco, my kids beg me to eat lunch there — I ALWAYS veto this request.

Today we spent a good hour wandering around, picking up things on our list and a few things that weren’t. As we wandered around, I thought to myself, “I should suggest picking up something to take home and cook for lunch, that way I can avoid the whole, lets eat a Costco, issue all together.

NO!

We checked out and sure enough my daughter was right on cue, “daddy, daddy, please can we eat at Costco?” I couldn’t say no. I wandered over to the food counter, placed our order — 2 hot dogs, 1 cheese pizza, 1 combo pizza and two fruit smoothies.

We sat and ate and laughed and smiled. Wow. That felt…AMAZING.

We have spent the majority of this weekend working in the yard. Oh I how I’ve missed that. I used to love coming up with little projects for the yard, spending a whole day in the sun and the smell of spring but the past two summers I haven’t appreciated it. In fact, when it came time to work in the yard, I flat out refused.

When my wife mentioned that she wanted to go get a few plants at a local nursery I was excited. We planted some tomatoes and peppers. Mowed the lawn. Weeded. Swung in the hammock. The smell of the blooming lilacs was amazing…what have I been missing out on?

The kids setup a slip ‘n slide in the front yard and after a hot day of work, I had to partake, work clothes and all :). It was a wonderful day and most important to me I know my family was happy to have me back in the garden with them.