Many times when anxiety begins for someone, seemingly out of the blue, it’s difficult to pinpoint as the ailments and illnesses that scream out at you telling you something is wrong, aren’t immediately recognizable as anxiety. Thus making you feel either crazy, or like you have a life-threatening disease. However, after years of trying alternative medicine and doctors telling you everything is normal, one is only left with the stress culprit and/or anxiety.
But even after learning that these results are your only fate, it’s difficult not to worry that the funny chest pain, foul stomach, dizzy head, shortness of breath, or extreme exhaustion, aren’t proponents of something much more life threatening than anxiety.
It’s true that the house is giving me plenty to think about outside my head but I can’t seem to fight the return of those crazy thoughts forcing my fight or flight triggered response into high gear. I do notice that it tends to rear its ugly head more around menstration and ovulation leaving me wondering if it’s hormones, my endometriosis, or the connection between my womanhood and infertility …all leading to more thinking and more anxiety.
If you’ve been keeping up, you’ll know that I’m not taking anything for it regularly but have Ativan on hand when I feel like I’m going over the edge. Here’s my dilemma with it: I feel like a failure when I have to finally admit that I am too crazy to calm down on my own and need medication as an aid. My husband, on the other hand, thinks the exact opposite. He thinks that I wait far too long to quell my normal anxious response and my brain has no other option as it’s comfortable with that reaction. And he’s probably right. I’m not sure why I have even more anxiety with taking medication when it really really helps. I know that I am deathly afraid of becoming addicted to it which, in all honesty, is ridiculous considering the amount I take, when I do finally take it, and my mind-set regarding medicine all-together.
I can say, as I sit here almost in tears that I hate it. I hate it so much. I hate that this is part of my identity and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it.
When I think back to when I was a kid, I have only memories of being carefree and not those of anxiety. However, when I really really think back, I can recall fits of wild laughter and giggling, temper tantrums, and outbursts of rage …and all signs point to nervous energy. And now, as an adult, when I have seemingly no reason to be angry, am too old for tantrums and can’t remember the last time I had a giggle fit, it’s easy to see that when I have no outlet, that energy inside me turns into anxiety.
So I think to myself, “What can I do to release the energy in a healthy way before it becomes an angry fearful ball of panic?” Yes yoga and meditation and more focused fun activity, that feeling of “letting loose”, singing and dancing used to help but I always seem to talk myself out of these possible solutions. And maybe that’s what my brain wants …maybe it’s addicted to the panic and anxiety. But I hate it with every ounce of my being …and maybe it’s just that, surrendering to it. Accepting it and moving on instead of thinking about it and worrying every five minutes that I’m going to panic. Sometimes I think I just need a good cry …like a good hard rain that cleans everything out. And sometimes I think I just need to shut the fuck up about it all and realize there is more going on in the world that I should be worried about instead of myself.
