|
YUK!! I am just starting to feel a little better after having been hit straight on by a sneak attack. I know sun we have credited a few symptoms the last little while as ‘the worst’ but today my vote goes to mixed episodes.
Cooking dinner, even though rather quick and easy took a toll on me. I starting to recent my son for not being willing to fix the easy dinner I had planned. It was his first day off crutches and he was starting to put weight on his leg so was reasonable to ask him to make the effort. I thought it was a good opportunity to make up for the last couple of weeks of getting out of chores. Including the endless shovelling I did on my own. But no, he needed to rest his leg.
At one point he came into the kitchen and asked if I was mad and I said more disappointed. I told him I was feeling taken advantage of and my needs being ignored. I was tired of carry the full load and would have appreciated if he had made the effort to pitch in. I pretty much just shut him out after that before I went over the deep end and said something hurtful that I would regret. I made it through cooking but felt too nauseous to eat so I just went to my room to rest while he ate his dinner in front of the tv.
I tried to just breath and settle myself down. It wasn’t working. It was a battle to control the tears that always are there when the anxiety gets a grip. As tired as I was I noticed that I was out of cigarettes (yes I smoke.... I know... my bad) and that meant I was going to have to walk the couple of blocks to the corner store. The anxious tears welled up even more, and the knots in my stomach tightened its grip even tighter at the thought of dragging myself to the store.
On the way back the rain started to come down in buckets. I love the rain and even more when it is raining really hard. I like how it sounds hitting on my shoulders and I like how it feels on my face. I like to watch it coming down and being blown by the wind. I decided a walk in the rain would give me a change to enter into mindlessness for a while and shake off the anxiety.
It was not easy. I had to fight off the urges not to want to go there. I felt a need to let the anxiety explode. I wanted the release. The awareness of that caught me by surprise. The urge to let it out just grew as did my resistance to seeking mindlessness. I wanted the rage.
Since we started this journey I have increasingly been able to maintain a level of mindlessness, and to take moments to attend to my breath at the slightest hint of anxiety. This time I didn’t want the mindlessness I wanted to explode. I wanted an instant release. I didn’t want to walk through it I wanted to get smack in the middle of it. I was angry at how meditation and mindlessness was getting in the way of that.
Nevertheless I continued my walk and started to focus on my breath and to observe the environment. I searched for faces in the shadows but none would come to comfort me. A zillion thoughts kept interfering. Acknowledge, observe, walk through it. I was feeling more grounded by the time I arrived home but still a cloud hung over me.
I returned to my sanctuary to lose myself in tv for a while but it was too stimulating so I just turned it off and sat back to rest. I ended up meditating, focusing on my breath for a good 15 minutes. It is interested how lately that when I feel ready to stop and I look at the clock it has repeatedly been exactly 15 minutes. I am feeling much better now though still tired. Maybe I will be able to get to bed early tonight though I am already feeling that 10pm shot of energy coming on. What is up with that anyways? geesh
Believe it or not I have tried to keep this short. I have deleted thousands of words and I am still left with too many. I just want to close by asking a few questions to see of any of you have experienced some of the same things as I do.
For one, I remember Sun you saying that you never cry. That surprised me. When my anxiety is rising the tears are quick to follow and really hard to pull back. They are like a release I can’t control. When I was still in denial and trying to still function in a high pressure job the anxiety was so out of control that I couldn’t even talk to people without the anxious tears getting in my way. It got to the point that I would tell my staff to just ignore the tears. It didn’t need to be a stressful conversation. It could be a friendly social conversation. Just the effort of listening and forming coherent sentences was beyond me. I was just wondering if others have experienced the same thing. Does anxiety trigger crying?
Second, has anyone else experience wanting to choose a meltdown over mindlessness? An urge to just let it explode rather than breath through it to get to a grounded place. It was a first for me tonight and it really surprise me how much I was in that moment resenting knowing anything about mindlessness or grounding. That urge I had tonight was like what I imagine a junky might feel when desperate for a fix. I wanted am immediate release. I didn’t want to stuff it, walk through it or anything of the kind. I wanted to explode.
Third.... I forget now what my third question was. Oh well... maybe it will come to me and I will bless you all again with an SS Novella. Lol.
It has been quite a night. I think I am numb actually but it’s okay. It’s a restful kind of numb.
|