Tag: mindfulness

Post 10: my anxiety has anxiety

Things have been happening. Don’t believe me? Check the news. Several people in this country employed by the government are currently not receiving a paycheck. This includes the entire United States Coast Guard, a branch of our armed forces military, which happens to be the service for which my husband is an enlisted person.

We are a single-income family, currently without a single income. We’re about to miss our second paycheck and there’s no end in sight to this government shutdown as of day 34. I’m not going to get into the dirty politics behind all of this because I’m trying to keep my mind healthy. Worrying about the events and people I can’t control has been taking the best of me away from my family and it has to end.

How I’m Managing My Worries

Step 1: I said goodbye to Facebook. I limited my access on a very large scale and have found the past three days to be quite refreshing, or at least as much as I can expect them to be right now. It’s a step in the right direction.

Step 2: I’m attempting to manage my anxiety itself. I have anxiety about managing my anxiety and one of the side effects of the medication I take to treat my anxiety is … wait for it … more anxiety! Tell me how to get out of this horrible cyclone of frustration!

I’ve been on Effexor XR for four years now. It’s caused me so much misery (sweating, dizziness, rapid heart rate, weight gain, more anxiety, etc) and I’ve wanted to come off of it for years now, but I chicken out every time. You see … the side effects of coming off of this medication are worse than the side effects of staying on. The withdrawals are like nothing this prude has ever experienced before in a mind/mood-altering drug. I’ve tried to come off a few times and after four days of intense nausea (so bad I can’t even sit up or open my eyes without getting sick) I’ve cracked and taken a pill. And mind you this is even after I’ve weaned myself to the lowest dose available. I keep trying to find a week when I can block out my calendar and plan to just be sick for days on end. But when my husband drives two hours to work and I’ve got a 4 1/2 year old, having me out of commission helps no one. So I snagged a prescription for scopolamine to help with the nausea and seasick-like feelings I get during the detox of Effexor and hope it helps me function.

Treating anxiety shouldn’t be this terrible. You shouldn’t have to resort to taking a medication that gives you additional symptoms. I’m working hard with an exercise/diet regimen in hopes it will be enough to take the place of the medication completely. Really I just want to feel like myself again … from oh so long ago.

Step 3: I’m writing in my worry journal daily to brain dump everything on my mind that I can’t fully address or control. It helps take the edge off and it feels like once it’s written down I don’t have to carry it around in my head anymore.

Step 4: I’m going to therapy. I’ve been seeing my therapist now for almost a year after I scared myself quite a bit with some really dark thoughts. Thoughts that involved me no longer being needed. I found myself sobbing whenever I took a shower and making folders of passwords and account numbers on my computer for my husband to have on hand, just in case. Something snapped in me and in a moment of clarity through the tears and the fog I realized what was happening and made called a psychologist right then. She got me in the next day.

I’m not sure why I waited so long in my life to add this part of self-care. Although I do find I’m still guarded when talking during our sessions and don’t fully open up, I can talk to her without feeling like I’m weighing down a friend with my burdens, and that counts for a lot. I probably will never not need a therapist, but it helps so much just to recognize that fact.

Step 5: I’m reaching out. While I’m worried that we aren’t getting paid and I have bills piling up and I’m trying to be intentional with every dime we spend, I’m allowing myself to be vulnerable and accept help. We’re used to being on the giving end of these efforts, but our community has done amazing and gracious things to keep furloughed federal workers fed and we’re now finding ourselves on the receiving end. Instead of continuing to say “oh, no, that’s not necessary. We’re fine” I’m opening up more and allowing others to help us.

For one, I’m meeting so many beautiful people this way. People I have much in common with but might not have met otherwise.

Secondly, and to put it frankly, we need the help. For a family that lives paycheck to paycheck on an E-5 salary, missing two paychecks (maybe more) hurts a lot. Sure we can get a loan, but then those will need to be paid back and some of those payments are due before pay will even resume. It’s not a good scenario no matter how you look at it.

I’m trying not to dwell, trying not to let it bury me. We’re keeping our heads above the water and our eyes open wide. This, too, shall pass.

Post 9: Appreciating the Journey

I fell off the wagon, and I’m pretty sure the back wheel ran over me as it continued on its way, leaving me face down in the dirt.

And that’s completely fine. In fact, I waved as I watched that wagon disappear on the horizon.

After meeting with my therapist last week I realized that the prize of this process for me isn’t actually in achieving my goals, but rather is the appreciation for and focus on the journey. It is in my being mindful of my actions, how I manage my time, and what I’m choosing to prioritize.

For example, in recognizing that I have an incredibly hard time waking up in the morning, exhausted and tired even after more than 8 hours of sleep, I have since started taking vitamins. Iron, vitamin C, vitamin D and b-complex are now part of my morning routine. When I don’t take them, I figure it out about 2pm when my body is begging me to nap, even after many hours of sleep the night before. Serotonin levels, gut health, anxiety … all of these contribute negatively to energy levels and weight gain. Bad!

To help with this, my therapist and I discussed Successive Approximation and how putting it into practice could reshape my responses to specific situations. For instance, instead of setting my alarm for 6am when I’m used to waking up at 8am (this is too drastic of a gap for me), this method would have me setting my alarm for 7:45am and not allowing the snooze button to be pushed. Once I am doing that easily, next I would set the alarm for 7:30am and so on. Small steps with rewards for when I head in the right direction.

Successive Approximation is acting in a way that gets you closer and closer to the desired behavior. For people like me, I visualize a desired result and then overwhelm myself by assuming there’s no other way to get over the mountain except in one leap. Of course this isn’t the only way, but my brain tends toward the extreme options. Making small, accessible changes that increase gradually also increases the likelihood you’ll get over that mountain. I’ve always been an “I want it now” person, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to look back on these posts one day and see a drastic change that was so gradual I never even realized it was happening.

In addition to all of this, my son started seeing a child psychologist a few weeks ago and she is working with him through play therapy. He’s learning to realize his anxiety, label it, talk about it, and bring himself down from it. He colors, he plays, he listens to soft music, he learns to belly breathe and meditate, etc. It’s only been a few sessions and I’ve noticed a difference already in his confidence. As I know full well, sometimes just having the knowledge you aren’t alone with your frustration gives you enough fortitude to stare down any uncertainty.

In order to continue his practices in the home environment I’ve picked up these books recommended to me by friends. Learning to be still, quiet and mindful are possibly the most powerful skills one can possess. I will post updates as we work through the books together.

The fourth book, Start Balancing by Kristy Dickerson, was given to me by a friend and mentor who’s also a fellow mom/entrepreneur. It’s a guided journal to self discovery and defining success. In the opening quote to this journal I underlined the sentence that reads “I believe I was intended to fail, to struggle, and to face defeat in order to learn how to succeed.”

These might be the most self-reflective words that I’ve identified with in some time. When it comes to goal-setting, I continue to fail because I have not learned enough about myself to set them successfully from the beginning.

And that, my friends, is what this journey is all about.

Day 2/part 2: Yoga begins

ACTIVE GOALS

  • Post daily for 365 days.
  • Grow out hair for 365 days.
  • Post daily gratitude for 365 days.
  • Lose 40-lbs in one year.
  • Gluten-free. Day 2/90
  • In bed by 10pm and awake by 6am. Day 1/7
  • 30 Days of Yoga. Day 1/30

    • I have a confession.

    I woke up at 6am this morning like I promised myself I would. I stayed awake researching, eating breakfast and watching Hoarders. Solidly productive. I went upstairs to gently wake my boy up for school at 8am and all hell broke loose.

    With an immediate and massive 4-year old’s tantrum in response to the gentle wake-up I decided it best to give his overly tired body more time to rest. I lied down in his bed with him and rubbed his back to help him calm down.

    I’m sure fellow parents can guess what happened once my exhausted body and stressed mind was back in a cozy bed. Next thing I knew I woke up at nearly 11am with my boy still sleeping next to me. So, while I technically accomplished my goal for the day I didn’t exactly work it the way I thought I would. But there is that element of listening to our bodies and giving them what ours so clearly needed: sleep.

    That said, the rest of the day was great. My son and I made a trip to the library for new books, I got my hair trimmed and reshaped to prep it for growing out, and I had a healthy, gluten-free meal at Panera with my family tonight. Not so easy to walk into a restaurant with the word “bread” in its name, but I got by with the turkey chili and the Santa Fe Chile Lime Chicken Salad. I would have preferred bread, but that’s just how it goes.

    After dinner my boy and I came home and set up the room to start Day 1 of 30 Days of Yoga. Originally I was going to do this myself when he was in school this morning but since we slept through all of that we had to improvise this evening.

    My sweet friend and neighbor invited me to hop on board Dedicate: A 30-Day Yoga Journey with Adriene with her. Today was Day 1 and it was so relaxing, focusing on breath and body awareness. Not only that but Adriene is very pleasant to listen to and the environment she invites you into is beautiful and calming.


    It’s so important to take time to slow down and practice mindfulness, and now that my son has followed in my footsteps and been diagnosed with anxiety, teaching him how to practice mindfulness is part of his treatment plan. This is such a lovely way for us to bond and work on our anxiety coping skills together.

    Here’s my little yogi, practicing hands to heart.

    We had a great 50-minute session, and while he got bored about halfway through the video and moved on to something else, it was good for him to see his mama sticking with it until the end. Even if in my final savasana he was piling placemats on top of me.

    To wrap up the day, I’ll close with my thankfulness piece. I’m thankful that there are therapists out there who are equipped to recognize anxious pain and confusion in children and to educate parents on the best way to help them through the process to figuring it all out. I wish it had been an easier resource when I was a child, but I’m glad it’s readily available now and that we can all work on improving and supporting each other in this area as a family.

    Until tomorrow, namaste.