Archives for category: Anxiety
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Sorting Shit Out

March 5, 2023 //
1

I’m awake brutally early on a Sunday morning. I’m in the co-work space I sometimes work from, drinking bad office coffee and feeling sad.

My Traveling Partner woke me abruptly, shortly after 0400, poking me and sharing his frustration by way of swearing at me. Something about my sleep (or lack of it) or breathing (or lack of it) or snoring was keeping him awake, and he’d finally had it with that, and woke me. Actually, he asked me to turn over, which is reasonable. The poke and the hostile frustrated tone woke me thoroughly. I wasn’t going to go back to sleep after that, and I was laying in the dark for a moment, contemplating maybe just getting up and what to do next, when my partner reappeared in the doorway and made a point of telling me more about his experience. The additional emotional load was too much for so early, and tears started to slide down my unprepared-for-this face.

I got up and started dressing. No way I seriously wanted to start my day this way. I also did not feel up to sticking around for more. He‘d have some chance of getting more sleep, perhaps, if I weren’t hanging about stewing over my “wake up call”. It made the choice to leave the house at that dismal hour a fairly easy one.

So, here I am. Bad coffee. Early hour. Dealing with it.

My Karma must be sooooo fucking bad… I mean, for real?

This morning this co-work space is my version of a mundane hell. I’ve got the solitude I so often crave, sure… but… there’s no potential for actual sleep, and I’m so tired (I did not sleep well last night), and the muzak in the background is pretty dreadful. Plenty of coffee – and it’s terrible. I dunno that I “deserve” this… I manage to be grateful for this place and time; it could be worse. It’s been worse, other times, other places, other relationships, and having a place to go to, when I need to walk away is a major improvement in my quality of life, generally.

Maybe that’s the lesson on this one? That there is generally an alternative to our misery, when we can accept it, or choose it, and that “grateful” is a path to a better emotional place…? Maybe there’s no lesson… just a woman, a laptop, a quiet place to write, and some sorrows?

I slept poorly last night. I’m grateful for the sleep I got.

I sit here drinking coffee and… seething quietly. I’m annoyed to be awake. I’m annoyed to be dealing with my emotions at this hour. I’m annoyed by the emotions themselves. My head aches fiercely and I’m tired. I’ve had sleep disturbances of various sorts “all my life” – or at least since I was a toddler, that I know of. I know the importance and value of good quality sleep. (I don’t actually get much of that. Don’t know how, maybe.) I do the good sleep hygiene stuff, and my sleep is the best it’s ever been – still not great. Not even reliably good. It’s not at all helpful that my Traveling Partner has gotten so comfortable with waking me up anytime he’s having trouble sleeping. I don’t know how to set a clear reasonable boundary on that; I’m often what’s woken him. He wants to sleep, too. Seems pretty fucking reasonable.

My Traveling Partner wants me to get screened for sleep apnea. Okay, sure – I’ve got an appointment to talk to my doctor about it. (I’m feeling a bit like a hamster on a wheel; I’ve done this step before.) I did a sleep study a couple years ago that resulted in… nothing much. I did not get a sleep apnea diagnosis. If I did? What would the result be? Probably a CPAP machine. I don’t expect an outcome like that to do anything much of value for my sleep (in part due to feeling “tethered” and in part due to the noise), but it’ll likely improve his. Maybe it would help – I don’t actually know. I can feel my internal resistance to the idea of it – not helpful.

…I do know I’m fucking over being awakened from what little real sleep I do get…

I’m tired and irritable, and tears start spilling over and sliding down my face. I don’t do anything to stop them, I just let them fall. Not one of my finest moments. I put my head down on the desk in front of me and sob helplessly for awhile, feeling grateful for the solitude, and the freedom to cry.

Eventually I lift my head and wipe the tears off my cheeks. I mean, for fucks sake, I’ve got a good life. This is ridiculous. I breathe, exhale, relax. Drink more coffee. I miss my partner right now. I miss my cute little house. I miss the warmth of my bed. I miss the good coffee there at home. In another couple of weeks, a stressful morning will just be the starting point for some miles on a trail, with my camera. Right now it’s still too dark for that (for me to do safely). My back is aching, and I remember that it is Sunday, and take my pain meds early. (“Maybe you won’t be such a bitch.” some inner voice remarks crossly.) My shaking hands manage to fling the contents of my pillbox all over the desk when I open it. These sorts of stressful mornings tend to make my pain perceivably worse, and my ability to manage it feels reduced. I get up and stretch, and wander the room restlessly before sitting back down to try and finish this rambling broody collection of words.

…I sometimes miss living alone. It felt easier. I’m frustrated that intimacy isn’t easier to build and maintain, however much I love my Traveling Partner. I’m willing to accept that it’s probably “mostly me”; I’m familiar with the quantity of chaos and damage I’ve got piled up, and I know my trauma history. Doesn’t make it easier to let go of wanting things to be easier. I’ve got a good therapist – I’ll just keep working at it. Eventually, maybe, I’ll be the woman I most want to be…

In the meantime, I’ve just got to begin again, again. My results vary. Sometimes it’s hard. There are verbs involved.

Tags , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, winter

Doing vs Selling

March 3, 2023 //
0

Finding a path to emotional wellness is more challenging than clickbait headlines or upbeat advertising leads us to believe. The encouragement we seek from friends, family, and therapists doesn’t making doing the work involved any less difficult, tedious, or frustrating. Progress is often the result of slow, subtle, small incremental changes over time that can be hard to celebrate, they’re just so… mundane.

It takes longer than we expect, to pull ourselves out of our worst bullshit and move on to better moments.

It takes more work than we expect to learn better self-care, better communication practices, and emotional resilience.

The work we put in often goes wholly unrecognized and unrewarded.

The slogans, homilies, and aphorisms of wellness and positivity can become toxic when forced or inauthentic, or if we just don’t feel any sense of progress or forward momentum.

Our negative self-talk can undermine our progress in therapy.

It’s just all very much a bit hard than it can appear to be through the lens of someone selling us on the idea of wellness, or on some particular treatment plan, new Rx, or catchy buzzword-laden new fad. Like it or not, there’s still quite a lot of actual real effort involved in finding our way through life to become the person we most want to be. It’s complicated.

You’re going to need to “do your own homework” on this one.

There’s no quick route to success in most things. That’s true of mental health, too. No shortcuts. No magic tricks. No cure-all easy “take one pill each day” remedy. No fancy retreat. No instant win. Mental health and emotional wellness do not exist on a fucking scratch-it. It’s not a lottery.

There are verbs involved. Your results will vary. You’ll likely get the best results on the things you are seeking to change or improve upon in your life because you want those changes and improvements. Shit that feels like an obligation or something you are doing to benefit someone else (or because you tell yourself you “have to”) won’t get reliably good results quickly – and it’s already a fairly slow process. I don’t say that to be discouraging; do you. I’m just pointing out that the things you change because you want them are easier. Relatively speaking. For some values of “easy”. It’s all very much still a lot of work.

You can not actually purchase the results you seek.

Do the work.

Seriously. If there’s somewhere in life you want to go, you aren’t going to get there standing still. That’s just real. Do something to move in that direction. Start small. Hell, stay small – small steps are still steps.

I still write about the value in practicing specific practices because a) I still find value in them and b) I’m still fucking practicing. The slow improvements of incremental change over time can seem tedious sometimes. There’s still improvement. It’s just slow – but the slow improvements have tended (for me) to mount up pretty reliably over the years (yes, years – as I said; it’s slow). It’s been worth it. Life is that much better now than it was then. I enjoy my experience of myself that much more now than I did then.

Am I free of stress and sorrow? Nope. Have I tidied up all my chaos and healed all my damage? Nope. Is life effortless and easy? Nope. I’m still 100% made of human, and it’s a very human experience. I’m just saying it’s better, and even, generally, very good. It’s been worthwhile to put in the time and effort to get here. I still went to bed last night without noticing I left the front door unlocked after taking the trash out. Human. I still sometimes say something hurtful to someone I care about. I’m still often way too hard on myself. So human.

It’s still worth the effort to improve my self-care, to learn to communicate more skillfully, to learn to slow down and be fully present, to learn to be kind and compassionate, and to heal. There are just a lot of verbs involved. Some days it’s easier to see where I’ve failed than to see how far I’ve come in such a short time. That’s just real – and also part of being so very human.

I sip my coffee contentedly. It’s a good morning to begin again.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, winter

The Here and The Now

February 28, 2023 //
0

I am sipping my morning coffee. It’s already mostly gone cold before I ever thought to put a sentence together, this morning. I started the morning thinking about far away friends, and the vagaries of the job market, and the likelihood of further lay-offs, and the nature of greed. That was pretty grim shit, and I shifted gears as a responsible adult, and did my payday budget and sent that to my Traveling Partner for his review and contribution to our planning and “household wellness”; his suggestions and planning are an important part of us getting where we are together. It’s a team effort. A partnership. Once that was done, I found myself still feeling restless and distracted, with elevated background anxiety lurking in the general “quality of the day”.

…It was as I typed those words that I noticed; I’m not “here and now”, just now – I’m “then”. Some of it is old baggage, and I’m snagged on some past moment. Other details are the pitfalls of worrying over a future that is not now. Doesn’t even matter whether it ever will be; I’m all over the worrying about it, already, well ahead of any need to do so. lol Fucking hell.

I take a breath. Then another. I let my shoulders relax. I drink some water. Another breath. I exhale, relax. I get up and stretch for a moment, breathing. I walk over to the windows and look out, down “main street”, taking in the sparkle of the lights that festoon the trees, and the way they are reflected off the wet pavement. The morning is relatively mild, for February. The snow is gone. I step outside, breathe the fresh cold morning air, and feel the hint of a chill that immediately begins to soak into me. I breathe. Exhale. See the fog of my breath expand and dissipate. I relax, again. I repeat the experience, before I return to my desk. Better.

Here. Now. Just this.

It’s time to begin again.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, winter

Finding the Words

February 18, 2023 //
0

I’m in the studio this weekend. It feels good to do creative work. I loaded my “painting playlist” for my ears, and my “inspiration slideshow” for my eyes, sat awhile with my thoughts and feelings, then turned my chair to face the window (and my work surfaces) and got started. Yesterday was a solidly good day of painting, with 3 completed canvases, and one background that needed to dry before I could do the foreground work. Very satisfying.

Today, I sit down once again, early in the afternoon with the filtered light of an overcast day brightening the room. Playlist? Check! Slideshow? Check! Ready to begin again? Yes, I am.

Today there is chocolate in my coffee, and an image in my head pulled straight out of a recent nightmare. I “don’t have the words” for the feeling it conveys, so I have to rely on canvas and color to “find the words” for me. Most of the paintings this weekend are bold colors, contrasting details silhouetted over wildly colorful sunrises, sunsets and … this…

new work, as yet untitled

Who is she? Is that her reflection? Is she alone, or following someone else? Is this image a metaphor for a journey, or change? Is this even “finished” at all? Where is she going – and why? Is she passing through a portal to another plane of existence? My eyes come back to it again and again, wondering.

…Funny what gets our attention…

This other thing I have in mind is thus far just a glimmer of a shape, colors, an idea with it’s roots in a terrible nightmare, but on it’s own it’s just an image… a thought. Can I get it on canvas? Will it tell me something I don’t know? Will it help me communicate something for which I lack words? There’s no way to know until I put brush to canvas and see it take shape.

…It’s time to begin again.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, inspiration, meditation, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, winter, Words

A Generous Helping of Fail Sauce

February 12, 2023 //
0

Damn yesterday was… unexpected. Such an auspicious beginning to the day, and still – it went rather horribly sideways. I’ll clarify that by “horribly”, I mean that my Traveling Partner and I had a falling out, raised voices, hurt feelings, deep sorrow, frustration, and lingering feels of emotional damage and despair, from which we had to work our way back to some sort of stable comfort with each other with great care, commitment to our lasting affection, and real effort. Many verbs involved. No violence. I make a point of saying that because a) I’ve for sure known far worse and b) it’s important for me to stay positive and aware of how good things actually are, but also that yeah – it’s still super shitty when we’ve been provoked into raising our voices with each other. It wasn’t a good day, although, to be fair, no one was injured in the making of our shitty experience together. I guess that’s something. I know I’m truly grateful that this is the state of “horrible” these days, vs more extreme “horrible” experiences I have known.

…The gratitude I feel, and my appreciation for my Traveling Partner’s day-to-day patience with my chaos and damage doesn’t do much to prevent bad days like yesterday. That’s unfortunate. One of my challenges is that domestic violence – real, ugly, physical violence – leaves more than physical scars. The psychological scars and the emotional scars are by far more “lasting” and “deeper” sorts of wounds, and I know I am not alone in the experience of struggling with those lasting trauma-based changes fucking me up all the g’damned time in my current otherwise quite healthy relationship. If it were “just me” we’d probably both have an easier time of things, but he also has his PTSD crap to deal with, his own “chaos and damage” to heal. It’s rough sometimes to “be there for each other” when it feels like we’re at odds with each other in some moment. It’s “the hard part” of loving someone who has been dealt grievous injuries by others.

I’m glad yesterday is behind us. I’ve got a few things to make amends for. Apologies, at some point, don’t quite fix things. It’s more important to “go forward doing better”, but it’s hard to trust the process – for either of us. It’s complicated.

I’m not sharing this seeking to bitch or seek sympathy, just saying; it’s real, it happens, it’s hard, and yeah – I’ve still got to pick myself back up, love myself and my partner, clean up the fail sauce that’s spilled just every-fucking-where, and begin again.

…Sounds so simple…

My back aches. My pain is through the fucking roof after yesterday, because that level of stress almost immediately uses up my resilience – it “empties my glass” right away. No spoons left. My ability to “bounce back” is impaired. It’ll pass. I remind myself frequently that it will, and make a point to attend to the details of every small improvement. It helps to “refill the glass”. (This can be much harder for “glass is half empty” folks, and maybe just a tiny bit easier for “glass is half full” folks.) I make a point to stay on top of my medications. To eat when I need to. To choose activities with care and self-consideration. To be kind to myself and my partner.

This morning we had our coffee together. It was pleasant. We spent the morning playing a video game together on his computer (him playing, me “helping” and making participatory conversation) – it’s a new game for me and I like it so well I downloaded it to play, myself, later. These shared experiences are very healing; they restore our emotional connection and rebuild a feeling of intimacy. They strengthen our bond. Practical and useful. We could do anything that is a shared positive experience – we could cook together, play a board game or a card game, walk or hike together… those things all work. The “secret” to success here is that the shared activity should be an engaging distraction from the shit that went sideways, without being “evasive” or “avoidant”, and works best if it is fun and positive – uplifting. This seems to be what works best for us, at least.

So… here I am on what feels like a very pleasant day. I hesitate to take the lovely day for granted after yesterday’s… side quest. Still… we did begin again, and we are here, now. It’s enough. I’ll keep practicing. I’ll keep working on being the woman I most want to be, and keep working to clean up the chaos, and heal the damage.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, grief, Love, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, winter
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »