1-1-11. Tehe, that's fun to type.
Had a good New Year's Eve, full of errands and helping sick people and trying to keep kids and adults from fighting. It was grand! But hey, got to play Wii bowling and watch "Despicable Me" for the 4th time in 24 hours. "Liiiiightbuuuuulb!"
SO let's get into it...When dealing with my anxiety, I usually associate the numbers 1-10 to determine how mildly or severely it's affecting me. So from this point on, I'll be describing my anxiety as a "Level 4" or a "Level 7" in order to help give a broader picture of that day's experience.
For a good chunk of yesterday, I was at a Level 3, which usually requires some deep breathing and a couple repetitions of a positive affirmation, but I had a couple really good distractions to keep me pretty level. The peak of my issue came after Midnight rang and my husband had to drive our friends home 5 miles away. For obvious reasons, I was quite anxious and stayed awake long enough for him to pull back into our driveway, safe and sound. Much of my anxiety is triggered when he leaves, however, being a symptom of agoraphobia, I am encouraged to practice this exercise often to where I am quite comfortable and secure when he isn't home.
Funny, never thought of it before: when he was drinking, he was unpredictable and unreliable. I awoke many nights to him either being gone or yelling for our dog at 3am, drunk off his ass. Ever since I've been back home with him, I haven't been able to fall asleep until he is inside the house. Strange how trauma conditions our brains...
One thing I've noticed is the lower my anxiety level, the less determined I am to actively recover. I think of this as being similar to taking anti-biotics: you'll start to feel better after a couple days and will then want to stop your course of treatment, however by doing so, you may be creating a much larger problem for yourself in the future. Wow, I just came up with that! What a great image, so I'll keep this image in mind when I'm starting to feel like everything is fine and back to normal. The key, however, is to not facilitate more anxiety strictly because everything is fine (hey Moms, does THAT sound familiar?).
Before I began my journey to recovery three months ago, these bouts of panic would overwhelm me and I'd wait anxiously for the sensations to pass and then move on with my life. However with this phase of anxiety in my life, that "finalizing moment" has yet to happen; rather, the anxiety has persisted, day after day, with small "eyes" of relief. Needless to say, it wasn't hard for me to start feeling hopeless and like a victim in all this. The question "Am I going to be like this forever?" circled in my head, like a vulture waiting for me. Then came the torture of looking back to prior days and feeling like what I was once able to do no longer comes to me with the same level of ease (such as going to the store or stepping outside my house) created a lot of stagnant energy. Hopelessness coupled with self-doubt is all you need to really lose your mind.
In Dr. Bourne's book, he describes the specific personality traits that create the perfect environment for anxiety to move right in. Of these, the most persistent that have been my biggest challenge are the "Perfectionist" and the "Critic." These two bitches insist that you're never good enough and WILL never succeed, no matter how hard you work, thus creating the perfect soil and bed conditions for the seeds of anxiety to grow. Statements like "you should" or "that was stupid" are sharp words when dealing with anxiety. Their other two sisters, "Worry" and "The Victim" chime in their two cents as well with their "what if's?" and "I'll never get better." So what's the solution? Believe in yourself and find the courage to change.
Change doesn't come naturally to humans, I think. We're conditioned to stay in our "conditioned state" by the electronic goings-on in our brains. When we start to build newer, more efficient pathways in our heads, our brains see this as a threat and go into overdrive to ensure these pathways fail. It is in this theory of mine that I believe I'm having the persistent anxiety. Also, it's not easy learning how to believe in yourself when you've spent so much time criticizing yourself. The process of dismantling self-criticizm and negative-self-talk is similar to learning how to grow new arms. But if I had lost my arms or had messed up arms and yet possessed the capability to grow new ones, you bet your ass I'd do it.
So in light of the New Year and the human tradition of "resolutions" I'll be following a path in which I'll learn how to love and accept myself for who I am, what I am capable of doing and that I can make mistakes just as gloriously as anybody else. I will turn my "What If's?" into "I can"; I will take my bad thoughts and transform them into positive realities for myself; I will empower my victim to learn that the world is NOT out to get her; I was will show my Perfectionist that sometimes it's the mistakes that enhance our lives. I am the phoenix and I am rising.
