MyAnxiousMind

This week my anxiety has been moderately high.  I have attributed it to lack of sleep and stress.  Although my anxiety has been high, I have continued to push myself towards recovery.  Remember, that recovery from anxiety is hard work.  Just sitting in a doctor’s office every two weeks isn’t going to cure you, nor is time alone, you have to put in dedicated work if you truly want to recover.

Yesterday I used my lunch break to run errands and this morning I got the kids up early and we were first in line to have my car inspected so that I could get it registered, yes I waited until the second to last day of the month to get it done.

Today, I sat in my cube, not wanting to go out.  I wanted to feel bad for myself.  I wanted to find some physical defect to attach to and research the new disease I’m dying from.  I wanted anxiety to win today.

As I sat here, pondering, this foreign positive thought hit me.  “Get up and get going.”  So I messaged a friend for a bit of support:

 Jason says:
do i go to target or do i sit here?

CM says:
go

CM says:
go jason

CM says:
get out

That was all the push I needed.  I grabbed my keys and headed to target.  Remember my Great Day? Well, I have a house full of apricots that I don’t know what to do with, so I went to Target and picked up all the supplies I need to make apricot jam.  Rather than running home and crawling into my bed tonight, I’ll be making jam for my friends and neighbors.

Yesterday was a very high stress day for me.  At work I learned that my friends brother-in-law died over the weekend of a heart attack.  Another friend at work told me her nephew was seriously injured by a home made firework.  When I got home, I remembered that I need to get my car inspected and registered before the end of the month.  My daughter has a friend’s birthday party tonight that I need to get a present bought for.   My son is upset he isn’t invited to the birthday party.  Laundry backing up.  On and on.

Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well last night, my mind was running and running with all the things I needed to get done.  This morning, sitting in my chair at work, I was wondering why I was feeling so run down and tired, of course the first thing to cross my mind wasn’t the fact that I stayed up too late and didn’t sleep well.

I felt the urge to jump onto the Internet, my ritual for finding reassurance that I’m not dying today, but instead I jumped into my car and drove to Target.  I wandered around the store and found a present and a nice bag to put it in.  I browsed the game section and found a fun racing game I’m sure my son will enjoy — I’ll play this game with him tonight while his sister is at the birthday party.  I picked up a few treats to snack on at work and then checked out.  As I walked to my car I thought to myself “wow, that was really enjoyable, I can’t remember the last time that I just wandered around a store.  I have gotten so used to running in, picking up my items and running out.  Great progress Jason!”.

I am now back at work, and yes I am tired and run down, but I feel better that I was able to get a few things on my “to do” list checked off.  I am living my life with anxiety.

Wow, yesterday was such a great day. As I lay around my house, feeling comfortable, I pushed myself to getup and get going. I started the day with a glass of fresh fruit and vegetable juice and a mile run.

I had an invitation from a friend to pick apricot’s at his house, I thought to myself “sure, that would be fun and a great excuse to get out.” A year ago I wouldn’t have gone, in fact a year ago I had the same invitation and didn’t go.

On the way to my friends house, about a 40 minute drive from my home, I picked up some pizzas and dropped them off for my family, who are diligently working on building a family cabin this summer.

I arrived and my friend’s home and we picked apricots in the 100 degree heat. The heat and the long drive could have easily been a deterrent but I never let those thoughts cross my mind.

After getting a large basket full of apricots, still not sure what I’m going to do with them all, I thought it would be easy just to drive back home and call it a day but instead I pushed myself.

I drove back up the canyon, where my family was hard at work on the cabin, found a pair of gloves and went to work. 3 hours later, dripping with sweat, as I stopped to get a drink I thought to myself, this is the first time I have been up here and haven’t felt any anxiety. No dizziness. No weirdness (depersonalization). No racing heart. No need to run away. No panic. It was beautiful.

On I worked until the early evening, tired and sore but so happy.

Yesterday was a high anxiety day for me. Nothing in particular that I was nervous about, just what they call “free floating anxiety”. Just had this underlying sense of fear. I wanted to go home and crawl into bed but a gentle nudge from a good friend kept me going.

He told me, “don’t you worry about it, notice that you have anxiety, acknowledge it, and go on with your day. Don’t let it stop you from doing whatever you had planned.”

So that is what I did. I continued working. I played ping-pong at lunch. I went out to get some food. When I got home, we decided to take a drive up the canyon. On our way home, I thought it would be a good idea to stop at a local hamburger drive-inn that we enjoy.

I continued to face the day and even invited some situations, an unplanned stop at the drive-inn, that would create anxiety. To be honest, I didn’t want to do any of these things but at the end of the day I felt so much better about myself that I did.

We have to experience anxiety to free ourselves from the bonds of anxiety.

In order to recover from anxiety you have to have anxiety, this is the paradox.  If I want to start feeling less anxiety, I need to find situations that create anxiety.  In our minds, we think we must find a safe place, we must stay home, we must avoid but the paradox of anxiety says that if we avoid anxiety, we will create even more anxiety.  If we do things that cause anxiety, we will create less anxiety.

This can be difficult news for the anxiety suffer to accept.  If I’m afraid of driving on the interstate, the only thing that will cure that is to actually drive on the interstate.  Sure, I’m making big leaps forward, there are always baby steps, smaller goals along the way to recovery but in the end if I want to say to myself I can now do the things I used to be able to do, I have to do them first with anxiety present.

If you have read through my story, you know that anxiety has impacted my life both mentally and physically.  On the physical side of things, I became housebound and nearly bed bound.  When I did leave my home, I walked to my car, drove to work, walked to my desk (didn’t get up all day), drove home, and got back in bed.

When I first started seeing a psychologist, I also began to push myself to become more physically active.  I purchased a pedometer, just to see how lazy I really had become.  Upon arriving home from work, I would glance at the results and see that I had walked between 800-1,000 steps for the day.  As a note, it is recommended that you walk between 8,000 and 10,000 steps a day.  This came as no surprise to me.

I began walking in the morning and soon was finishing the day between 3,000-4,000 steps a day.  Fast forward to a few weeks ago.  I added a morning run to my routine.  When I first started, I timed a one mile run — 10 minutes.  This morning, I did another 1 time timed run — 5 minutes 58 seconds!

Progress does come, we just need to be aware enough to look for it.

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 29

Do you want to improve the world?
I don’t think it can be done.

The world is sacred.
It can’t be improved.
If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.

There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.

The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle.

In the early months of recovery, I felt like I always needed to be going forward at sprinters speed. Never looking back, never taking a rest, just running ahead as fast as I could. I quickly realized that there are phases to recovery. Sometimes you move ahead quickly. Sometimes you need to stop on the side of the road to rest. Other times you need to retreat a few steps to find the right trail again.

I guess it was all about my need to have control, wanting to get control back (as if I ever had it) I was willing to run and run and run until I got there. However, it wasn’t until I began to give up, stopped trying to control how I felt, that I actually began to make real progress towards wellness.

Today, I am more focused on remaining balanced, allowing things to be as they are. If I am anxious, I am anxious. If I am tired, I am tired. If I am fully of joy, I am full of joy. Remember that recover takes time, allow yourself to go at your own pace, the race is long, don’t tire yourself out by trying to get nowhere fast.

My doctor loaned me a copy of his book The Sky Is Falling  which talks about the hows and whys of phobia, panic, and obsessive-compulsive disorders.  I’m finding this book to be very insightful, the other night as I was reading, I came across a few words that really struck a chord with me.

Einstein once said, “It is the theory that determines what we can observe.”  Because we believe something to be true, we see only the facts that confirm our belief.

I immediately stopped reading and put the book down.  WE ONLY SEE THE FACTS THAT CONFIRM OUR BELIEF.  I believe I had a deadly disease, I only see the facts that support my belief.  I don’t see the overwhelming facts that I in fact have an illness called anxiety.  I also don’t see the mountains that I have climbed and the amazing progress I have made in recovery from anxiety because those facts don’t fit into my current belief system.

It all started to make perfect sense.

I also began to recognize that, even though I don’t see myself as having OCD, I can see how I have developed rituals and routines as coping mechanisms: Taking my pulse, weighing myself, taking my temperature, running to WebMD or MedHelp.com, asking friends for reassurance that I’m ok, etc. etc.   These rituals are done to help alleviate the pain associated with anxiety.

Today, rather than believing that the sky is falling, I march on.  I invited a friend at work to go to lunch with me, not to rush through the drive-through, but to actually go in, sit down, talk.  Also, earlier in the day, another friend asked if I would join him for a quick walk outside, without thinking, I quickly jumped out of my chair and went.

WE ONLY SEE THE FACTS THAT CONFIRM OUR BELIEF.  So, lets change our beliefs.

I debated if I should write this post or not, given that my posts last week were all about positive growth and recovery, but I decided that it is best to just be honest about my anxiety and my recovery. Recovery from anxiety, like any other illness, is never a straight line extending from here to wellness. The road is filled with many pot holes and a few dead-ends on the way. Although it is important to maintain a positive attitude towards recovery and life in general, it is also important to understand and accept that there will be good days and bad. There will be days when you feel 100% cured and days where you feel like you can’t face the day.

I have had a number of really good days in a row, days where I still had anxiety but I just accepted it for what it was and actually felt change happening in my body. On Friday, I really began to push myself, which I don’t regret, however I can see now that the experiences led to increased levels of anxiety that continued throughout the weekend.

So, what is it like to wake up with an anxiety disorder?

As the early morning sun pokes through the blinds, I began to stir and fight the arrival of the day. Rather than rising and getting on with the day, I fight it, I curl up under my blankets, hoping for a few more minutes of sleep. I feel my heart begin to pound. “What is that? Is this a sign of heart disease? Why is this happening now? What if this happens during my meeting this morning?”

As I begin to worry more and more, I feel a sinking feeling deep in my stomach. “You probably should call in sick today.”

Finally, after starring at the clock for 15 minutes, I force myself from the safe confines of my bed. I drag myself into the shower and let the hot water wash away all the fear. By this point, I have already run my body through a marathon, so is it any wonder that I am starting the day off tired? I manage to get myself together and out the door.

As I drive towards work, the monster inside keeps talking to me. “Think you can make it the whole week? Are you tired? Do you feel week? Well, my bet is you will probably pass out, lose control, look crazy, be a failure.”

I pass a movie theater and think to myself how wonderful it would be to spontaneously take my kids to see a movie. I pass a gas station and notice I am running low on gas but I don’t want to make any unplanned stops between home and work. My mind drifts off and starts to think of all the life experiences that I could be having but have chosen not to because of fear.

Is it any wonder that those of us with an anxiety disorder feel run down? Feel out of sorts with our mind and body? It would be like running a marathon, every morning of your life and then expecting to go through each day full of energy and vitality. Just as any great athlete needs down time for their bodies to repair themselves, we need down time to allow recovery for both our minds and our bodies.

The “bad days” are when we practice, when we exercise. The “good days” are when we rest, recover, and strengthen.

It has been a good week, I’ve made some great progress, and most importantly I’ve been experiencing life with anxiety.  During the weekend, my anxiety level has gone up a bit but all in all I can’t complain.

Yesterday, I picked up my grandparents and took them for a drive up the canyon.  Last night I took my kids and one of their cousins to see some fireworks at a local park.  Today I’m trying to get my house clean and I’m cooking a nice dinner for my family and inlaws.

I’m not sure why my anxiety level is up but yesterday I did notice that of times of anxiety I began to panic a bit rather than just taking notice of the anxiety like I had done throughout the week.

One thing that is clear that people with anxiety, like everyone else in this world, experience ups and downs.  Life is never lived at one level, we are constantly in a state of flux and it is perfectly ok not to feel 100% all the time.

However, it is in these times that it is very important to remember to think and act correctly, it can be so easy to slip back into our old habits and rather than being positive and saying “hey, its ok to feel this, I have anxiety” we climb under our covers and hide from the world.  When we are feeling great, it is so easy to look anxiety in the eye but if we can do this when we are feeling a bit down then we will take giant leaps forward.