Archives for category: Anxiety
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A Test, a Pizza, a Wonderful Day

January 26, 2013 //
1

Living mindfully is still something that feels like a challenge. I’ve spent a lot of my lifetime in my own head trying a lot of strategies and deceits and games with myself to somehow make the things that hurt seem just a little less part of who I am, and it has cluttered up my emotional landscape and complicated my everyday life. I’m trying something different these days, and this blog is actually a piece of that. I’m trying to connect more with people directly, including myself, and less through technology. I’m also learning to savor my experiences in the moment, good and bad, in an effort to make them more profound and meaningful, and maybe free myself from the past. So… no blog post yesterday, because life had my attention in a very real and immediate way, and was certainly worth experiencing in fullness.

Years ago I gave up driving. I had moved to an area with good public transportation, and I was no longer enjoying the experience of driving, so I gave up my car when it died, and gave up driving, too. That was… 1999, I think. So, here it is, 14 years later, and yesterday I got my driver’s license. It was kind of a wow moment, especially because I scored really well and made very few mistakes.  I’m excited to have such a fundamental piece of decision making and freedom of movement back. I spent the afternoon window shopping with one of my partners, and we got an amazing pizza and took it home for dinner. We spent the evening hanging out as a family, and it was definitely the sort of evening that puts the fun in Family Fun Time! Great music, great conversation, more love than words exist to describe.

Right now I’m wrapped in weekend life; doing laundry and housework, catching up on correspondence, hanging out with my loved ones, and just generally enjoying my experience. It’s very nice. It’s … serene. And satisfying. I am, in this moment, right here, right now, very happy. Right now, that’s quite enough to make ‘everything’ seem alright.   This is a very good experience.

Categories Anxiety, Perspective, Relationships

Connectivity

January 24, 2013 //
4

Even in the digital age, we are each having our own experience.

I know I’m having my own experience, because so much of it is entirely unshared, and in some cases perhaps even un-shareable. By the end of 2012 I was well on my way to a full collapse of my understanding of myself, emotionally, intellectually, philosophically, even historically.  Choices that once seemed obvious, had become questionable beyond the point of my own ability to consider the questions with clarity, my anxiety had become unmanageable, an event in the news hit my consciousness and destroyed a big piece of my everyday understanding of my sexuality, my hormones march ever onward toward menopause, and new information about my own experience came to light, leaving me confused and introspective as I entered the new year. What a new year it has been, so far… If the value of time and events is measured in their intensity, impact, and significance, then 2013 may well prove to be one of the most important years of my life…my life. My experience. I rather doubt that most people around me have any real awareness of my internal turmoil, even my partners. They are also having their own experiences.

I find it complicated when I work on my priorities, my goals, or try to identify my needs and wants in a clear and simple way because, although I am having my own experience, I am at least somewhat aware that my experience has elements shared with others. Our perspectives may differ, probably do differ, but those common elements become the foundation stones of shared understanding, conversation, emotional bonding, and a feeling of being connected. I like feeling connected, but it doesn’t always come easily to me. Lately, I often have difficulties feeling connected, even in very close relationships. The easy course of action is to attribute the difficulty to the challenge of the moment, whatever that may be, but when I’m honest with myself it is bigger than that, and needs my attention.

49 seems like an appropriate age for an identity crisis, I guess… but how does one connect with someone who isn’t sure who they are? I find myself wondering – acknowledging? – that it must be very hard on people who love me, and I manage a moment of sympathy and concern, before my mental nail-biting returns to figuring out the puzzle that is me. I struggle with figuring out what needs to be shared, what would be ‘over sharing’.  My friends, partners, or lovers are not my therapist, or parents, or authority figures, and respecting their boundaries, and our relationships, really requires that I not handle my issues in a way that nudges them into one of those roles… but I am also aware that the mental health industry might actually collapse if people really share their experience more openly with people who matter to them, there would be that much less demand for those services.  Connectivity and emotional support actually matter that much to day in and day out quality of life. (If it seems I’m being over-obvious, I’ll take a moment to admit that I didn’t understand that until relatively recently in my life.)  I want to cultivate a strong connection with people I care about; I don’t always know how.  It’ll sound strange to say, perhaps I’m phrasing it badly, but I’m not sure I know how to ‘make a strong connection with myself’ right now – that can’t make it easier to connect with others.

So…I am having my own experience, and you are having yours. Maybe trying to share mine isn’t the best route to take to feel connected right now… I think today I will explore trying to let go of how badly I need to be heard, and just listen. I may learn something about feeling connected.

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Menopause, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50

An Odd Quiet Moment

January 17, 2013 //
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It’s been a tough few days. Actually, for me it has been a challenging few weeks, of soul searching, questions, doubt, insecurity, fear, anxiety, perspective altering information, gains, losses, love, Love, anger, disappointment – did I mention the fear, insecurity, and anxiety? It has been emotionally busy…difficult…painful…meaningful…and worthwhile and necessary.

This week I saw two loving beings be better than circumstances require, more compassionate, more rational, and more supportive under stress than people are expected to be. I saw some of the best that ‘civilized’ humanity has to offer one another. I am awed. Almost speechless with wonder – and appreciation that two such people are part of my life. I hope to live up to that example, myself. I’d like to turn 50 being the very best person I’ve ever been, able to make use of a lifetime of wisdom, and surrounded by people who love me.

Evening light…and a quiet moment. I am not alone tonight, I am surrounded by love and a significant measure of patience, and support. I won’t be writing long tonight, there isn’t that much left to say right now. There aren’t enough words to write enough thank you’s to express how I feel tonight. I think I could spell it ‘hopeful’.

Categories Anxiety, Perspective, Relationships, Turning 50, Words

Making a Choice

January 16, 2013 //
4

Choice is a tricky thing, and carries with it the characteristic of ‘accountability’, for each choice I make.  Education and coaching tell me things like ‘don’t blame the victim’ and give me reminders that events forced on me against my will are ‘not my fault’. That sounds easy enough, but it’s a complicated thing, because my own choices at any point after an event that ‘isn’t my fault’ are still entirely mine, and the accountability for them is also mine. Isn’t it? Does a brain injury, or child abuse, or domestic violence get me off the hook for being accountable for my own actions, my own choices? It doesn’t seem that it would…but are my choices themselves, or my ability to make them well, altered by my brain injury? My PTSD? My hormones? What does that mean for me, or for my relationships?

I’m staring at a lifetime of bad decision making, poor choices, failures to be accountable, and I am frustrated and tired and disappointed that at 49 I am not a better human being than I am. I spent the night in quiet contemplation, no real hope of sleep. I am tired, too tired for clear thinking, terrified to let my mind rest and risk losing a moment of understanding or any sort of step forward. My anxiety is completely out of control and I feel lost and very aware that my decision-making may be impaired… except… wasn’t it already?

Life lays out the choices. I have to see them, and make a choice. I’m choosing to do a better job of being a good human being, moment to moment. I expect that choice will have it’s own unique challenges, and may be more difficult than it sounds. (I hope that if I have to let go of what means most to me right now because of failures to be a better human being sooner, I will find being committed to treating myself and others well, and being honest and thoughtful with my choices in the future, will be enough to earn something that means as much as what I have cost myself through my bad choices in the past.)

We’re all having our own experience. The significance of what we do isn’t solely our own – someone else will experience it along with us, in their own context, understood from their unique perspective. Please help me make the world just a bit better than I have made it on my own, so far; treat someone who is hurting with compassion and understand that they are having their own experience, and that is both their truth and their world. Treat people well, especially the ones you love. Make good choices that meet your needs over time. I am pretty sure that if I successfully did those things every day, life would be wonderful.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Perspective, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50

Observations about Anxiety

January 15, 2013 //
3

Yesterday’s pain loiters in my consciousness, an unwelcome visitor whose incessant self-centered small talk has become a sort of white noise of negative messaging in the background of my day; anxiety. My intellect, and years of experience, tell me the anxiety, although difficult to dismiss or suppress, isn’t ‘real’. Well, it isn’t real like my keyboard, my office chair, my desk, or the sounds of humanity all around me. It’s a very different sort of ‘real’, commanding my attention without a concrete presence.

I am trembling and nauseous, watchful and hesitant, short of breath and feeling the weight of my fears and doubts on my chest. “It will pass…” I tell myself, over and over, as I work. “Focus on work, follow the routine…” the mundane details of daily life distract and soothe…eventually.  I’m sleeping at night… that’s something. Anxiety is much worse if I am not sleeping… but the nightmares ruin my concentration and feeling of peace. Nightmares of violence, nightmares of being trapped, nightmares that are my sleeping mind alerting my waking mind that I feel overwhelmed – as if I didn’t know. The headache isn’t helping me with finding balance and feeling calm, a search that has gradually become more a puzzle than a journey, over the past year.  I hurt and it clouds my thinking.

…I need some quiet time to think. I need to spend some quality time with myself – figure things out, focus on my heart, my soul… I need to paint.  Peculiarly, although I am aware of my needs, I struggle to meet them lately. My last opportunity, and only opportunity since before the holiday season, ended badly – I was anxious almost to the point of terror, and feeling more lonely than solitary, confused, and somehow bereft of purpose and meaning, both trapped and exposed. It wasn’t a very good way to spend 24 hours and now I find myself vaguely reluctant to try again, even while I feel like I can’t manage my time well enough to get a moment alone. Being a human primate, a being of both reason and emotion, sometimes seems needlessly complicated.

I need to walk more; I can really think when I am walking. I need to be more consistent with my yoga practice; it helps me relax and be mindful and serene, and compassionate with myself. I need to talk less, and listen more. I need to find a quiet space to call my own. I have hopes that the rose garden can become that space, over time… I sure need to figure something out, solve the anxiety like a problem, somehow.

Categories Anxiety, Art, Post Traumatic Stress, Words
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