Your life is in your hands

Hello Anxiety...

It's just turned 9 o'clock or if you're being specific 9:03. Before I sat at my desk to look out the window which was holding the brisk blue morning outside, I was nearly exploding with ideas to write. Now that I have had a shower and sat down, you have guessed it - they have gone. But, here is something I wrote some days ago when it just felt like everything was crumbling over me...

Is this ever going to end?

I can’t cope anymore. 

I am trapped here. Stuck in this nervousness by the tense walls of my body. Each muscle is fringed and pulling away from me. I don’t think I can take this much longer. I feel sick. Oh no – I feel sick. I feel sick! I am so afraid. It’s getting worse! Stop making it worse. Calm DOWN. 

Perhaps I can’t. What if I can’t calm down? 

I am not going to calm down. Another sloshed wave of nausea hits. I panic. I don’t know what to do. Why is this happening to me? I want it to go away and never come back. Gosh, why did I have to be like this? 

Too soon I become aware of every negative thought. It numbs me, controls me. Stops me from wanting to fight. I took punch after punch. In the ring in my mind anxiety was winning. I couldn’t get up. Just lay there on the floor taking blow after blow, thought after thought. I was bowing in submission. I felt too weak with the tension which has plagued me for weeks. Memories of anxiety relentlessly flashing in front of my eyes, trying to make me feel as though I was reliving the same moment. It was at night. It’s night now etc. I had enough of always feeling this way.

In some way it was like I was predicting my own prophecy. A prophecy that in reality or written down was warped, distorted and blurred by something other than myself. Where can I go? 

Somehow you feel like you are scrambling in a pit slick with mud. You are trying to reach the top, but you keep sliding down. Last night was not the best. But, it was not the worst either, however tempting it is to say so. I managed to control myself. Even though right now there is a voice in my ear telling me I didn’t. But, I did. 

So ok everything wasn’t suddenly sunshine and rainbows – though I would love to have that any day. Simply by playing with my dog, taking a shower, reading, watching some funny TV (not depressing TV – keep in mind it has to make you laugh) did help. Now if you are anything like me, you are sceptic. Or maybe it is that voice telling you as it did me – nothing is going to work. Don’t bother even trying it. It is all about what is best for you – not me or everyone else – just you. I suppose trying is better than nothing. It is the hope that says we can get through this. At the beginning of the night I was at my wits end. It told me I wouldn’t survive this. How could I go on living like this? Having so much stress in my body. And although I am a bit shaken up by last night, I got through so can you. 

So, whether you are just having a really crappy day, woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or  really worried about the day ahead, try to find what it is you enjoy that will take at least the edge off.

You don't always feel the same everyday. To me it is sometimes having these stretches of days may be more when 'it' has control of me and like a puppet I move with it until, I eventually break and fall like cascading dominoes.  Then after these times it is like a weird limbo. Everything you felt doesn't feel as heightened now. And what felt like long anxious 'I can't cope' anymore days have become a blurred memory you keep trying to get a hold of. This is not saying I don't feel anxious, just not as scarily so.

But, even though I felt my body was going without me. I was tense all the time and confused as to how to stop it. The good thing is that I feel a bit better now. Because the reality is that my life was put in my own hands. Just like yours is. It was not put in the hands of your friends, your family, your bank, your job, your school or a bully. It was put in yours. Accept that it is going to take time to feel less anxious. But, remember that being anxious is up to you. Like it was up to me on that night. And although perhaps I still wasn't the most relaxed, by trying to retake control I was taking one step out of many more.

So, as you head wherever you are going today. Try to take another step. Today is your day. Grab it because you can.

That Little Rainy Cloud

Hello Anxiety...

I have been nothing but a grump today. Just simply a bag of nerves walking around in a human suit. Perhaps if you could see the anxiety and depression, I would be strolling around with a cloud spurting lightening over my head. Like a balloon it would be tied to me with a bit of string around my wrist to stop it from blowing away. Sometimes I wonder whether people can see it like some Vegas sign saying Look here! Look here! Gosh look how anxious she looks, she must also be depressed. 

However, the majority of the time this is just Anxiety Anne whispering in my ear like a school bully who wants to see me break and cry. Or those days when I don’t feel particularly up to pretending in once upon a times. Although, today it definitely feels more out of my control.

 For us anxityacs it is a constant battlefield of wanting to blurt out everything we are thinking or feeling a million times over or completely the opposite and don’t want anyone to know, but feel as if we are showing it. Like the balloon (SLASH) cloud thing we feel tied to anxiety. I suppose in some ways you can say it feels just about controllable as the weather.

Together we have tied that piece of string around our wrist, and at the end of the day we can be the only ones to sever it. We could take this further by thinking of the water cycle (which is the fuel/reason/habit for anxiety). Now I am not going to embark on a year 8 Geography lesson, but to create a rain cloud the first thing it needs is water. This perhaps is the reason we became anxious, the event or trigger if you will. It builds the cloud up and up until it bursts out with rain – you get the metaphor right? And then we do it again, we make rain from the same sea of anxiety – building and building till we burst again. Like the water cycle it repeats over and over again till we develop, traits and habits we feel we can’t get out of.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not into my summer days and sunshine – unless that it is cold enough to wear a hoodie. Though there was something about the sky today that made the sense of doom as I walked to the doctors even more foreboding. In honesty, I don’t  know what I expected to happen. I was still afraid.

You see to get better, we have to believe we are in control. Yes, anxiety can feel like the weather. It can come and surprise us, make us feel drowned and windswept. That doesn't mean we can’t control it. Sometimes we choose to say it is uncontrollable, because it is harder (perhaps just initially) to challenge the habits its made. Its like the excuse we use  'it's anxiety - I can't control it', is the umbrella that we use to shield our-self from the situation rather than put matters into our own hands.  I am in the same boat too. Together we need to say I control myself. It is me who decides how to react to something.

 It’s like going on a diet and someone buys you a chocolate bar. You don’t have to eat it now. You have the choice to save it for another time or to treat yourself. Being in control is also being able to say ‘no’ to things. I know that is one of my biggest problems. I feel this obligation to please others before myself. This makes my life harder than it needs to be i.e. saying yes to do more work and feel like you are juggling too much.

When we are challenging ourselves it is good to be a little selfish to think of yourself before making a decision you will regret or know you wouldn't like. So, instead of trying to awkwardly shield yourself with an umbrella, try and cut that string loose.