Category : anxiety

Base Under Siege

I was watching the latest episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD tonight. It’s a particularly intense episode, a “base under siege” episode, like a lot of classic Doctor Who stories, like the amazing film by Howard Hawks, The Thing from Another World, and the also amazing remake by John Carpenter, The Thing. A place that’s supposed to be safe is suddenly closed off from the rest of the world. Monsters are all around you, lurking in the shadows, just on the other side of a closed door. You don’t know who you can trust. You’re not even sure if you can trust yourself. You’re wired on adrenaline and exhausted from running and fighting. You’re battered and bloody, inside and out. You want to run and you want to fight, but you can’t tell which is the right thing to do, so instead you want to curl up in a ball and do nothing.

That’s what anxiety feels like to me. Places I consider safe and fun suddenly feel threatening or vulnerable. People I consider friends seem distant, dismissive, unconcerned with how I am. I’m on edge, but I’m also tired, drained. I want to run and hide, but I also want to lash out, yell, break things. Mostly I want to collapse, curl up into a tight ball, and cry until whatever’s happening has stopped.

Anyway, this Agents of SHIELD episode. The scientist Jemma Simmons, bloody, bruised, heartbroken, afraid, begins to break down. Tears stream down her face as she says over and over that she can’t go on. And the one person she knows she can trust tells her, “It’s okay. I’ll do all the fighting. I won’t let them get you. We can do this.” Then the two of them get up, throw a loose plan together, and get on with the battle.

And it hit me: the next time I feel overwhelmed by everything around me, the next time I feel hurt and scared to the point of paralysis, the next time I feel like I can’t go on, I need to remind myself that I have friends who love me and will protect me, doing the fighting for me. I need to remember that even if I feel like it’s too much and I can’t go on, I can. And when I get through the anxiety–because even though it feels like the anxiety will never stop when I’m in the middle of an anxiety attack, the anxiety always goes away sooner or later–when I get through it and I need to rest, I can let myself rest. Because I damn well deserve a rest after that.

This was written for Sarah Fader and her Twitter hashtag #ThisIsWhatAnxietyFeelsLike.

2-23-2017 |

Self-Diagnostic 4

Checking in on myself again, assessing how I think I’m doing. Here we go!

January was, in a lot of personal ways, a good one for me. I continued writing one handwritten page every morning when I get up. It goes like this: wake up, brush my teeth, feed the cat, get coffee brewing, write a page, reward myself with a piece of Dove dark chocolate, make a star on that day in my calendar, then get online and check my email and social media. I didn’t skip a single day (and have so far still only skipped writing one day, my birthday) and it’s helped me break the habit of checking my phone and getting sucked into the internet as soon as I wake up. I’m very proud of and pleased with myself for that. I started scheduling an hour every day just for writing (usually at night, but one days when my nights are busy, in the morning) and while I haven’t written every day, and when I do it’s not always for a full hour, I have been writing more than I have in a long time, which feels fantastic.

I also posted something on this blog or, more often, my other blog every single day in January, and when I did, I made a black X on that day in my calendar. I’ve very proud of myself for that, too, although the pressure to have something to post started to override any pleasure I got from actually writing, so I might not continue posting every day. Instead, I’ll concentrate on writing every day and when I feel like I’ve got something to post, I’ll post. If that happens to be every day, cool. If not, also cool. As long as I’m writing something every day, no matter how small or rough, even just playing around with random words and phrases, I’m a very happy camper.

One way in which January wasn’t a good month for me? My anxiety got pretty bad. I took a week off from most social media when I started getting overwhelmed with personal and political postings. After the break, I’ve found it easier to step away and not spend so much time and energy on things like Twitter and Facebook, but I still get sucked in pretty easily and my anxiety still gets triggered pretty easily. I had a kind of anxiety breakdown on Monday–not a huge one, but it was bad enough that I felt like I needed to take a hard look at my habits and how I’ve been dealing with things. I think I had a breakthrough yesterday and started working on getting tools together–some new, some old but neglected–to better deal with my anxiety and not let it control what I do and how I do it. Anxiety is fucking exhausting, folks, whether you’re fighting it or giving in to it. But giving in to it also brings up feelings of weakness and of being broken. When I’m fighting it, I might feel exhausted, but at least I feel like I’m doing something positive. So. Yeah. Fuck anxiety!

I think this means that overall, I’m doing really well. Our current political situation is very dire indeed, but I’m personally getting stronger and more agile. I think I’m being at least some of the change I want to see in the world. For that, I get a cookie.

2-01-2017 |

Spinning Away

It’s a lot of fun when you’re being hit with ENFP stressors, which trigger your anxiety, and your anxiety starts dancing in a loopy,  upward spiral with your psychological baggage, and you start to think you’re too crazy and/or emotional for the Real World.

Yep, good times!

1-30-2017 |

Technology Is Your Frenemy

A little over a week ago, I woke up feeling well-rested and eager to meet the day, only to get smacked with a heavy dose of anxiety as soon as I thought about checking Facebook and Twitter, my two main social websites. The thought of reading comments on my Facebook posts–which are all friends-only, so the only comments come from people I know and trust–and reading replies on Twitter–which can come from anyone, since my account is public–as well as seeing what other people were posting, it all filled me with anxious dread. So I made a snap decision and posted on both sites that I was taking an indefinite hiatus, possibly never to return, but possibly coming back at some point, and gave contact info if people wanted to get a hold of me and keep in touch. (I also decided to keep posting to Instagram and Snapchat, since those sites take very little energy and give me zero anxiety.) I also continued to post daily on both of my blogs (this one and the other one) and invited people to comment on my posts.

Here’s how my hiatus has gone: (more…)

1-23-2017 | 2

Möbius Strip

Here’s a fun thing about generalized anxiety: you can’t be sure if a specific thing you’re upset about is the thing that triggered your anxiety or if you’re upset about that specific thing because of your anxiety, which wasn’t triggered by anything in particular. Good times!

I’m coming off of a multi-day run of generalized anxiety. When I’m in the throes of it, I feel like crying for no reason at all. When the anxiety has finally eased off, I feel like crying out of relief. At least I’m not uncomfortable with crying!

1-12-2017 |

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