October 2, 2011
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Ah anxiety~ why do I treat you as a friend?
I have this great propensity to worry. I mean I could participate in the anxiety Olympics.
At 5am yesterday, my iPad NOAA weather radio AP woke me regarding fire hazards in the area. When this happens on a Saturday morning, you and your partner notice. He was put off that yet another alarm went off and he got up to work. I went back to bed.
So last night I had a house full of family member celebrating three birthdays and I thought it would be a great fall night to enjoy wine by the fire pit. Sure enough although we doused the area with water and the fire naturally was about out before we doused the fire pit completely, I got up twice in the middle of the night to check it. I took a small piece of information that was only a warning and surmised a mountain out of it. I disregarding the facts that multiple people, myself included check the fire and put plenty of water on it. I disregarded the opinion of others that everything was fine. I put myself into hyperdrive worry mode.
My damn NOAA ap went off again this morning at 5am and again woke us both. This time I took it in a completely wrong direction. I jumped “to the worst conclusion in a single bound” about something else entirely. Enough so to make me almost to the point on needing to run to the bathroom to be ill. I said something that may not have even been heard and at 5am (when everyone is always sharp and at their best) I made a horrible assumption and am now, instead of sleeping practicing again for the anxiety Olympics.
From what I am learning I am guessing that anxiety is much worse for introverts as we spend so much time mulling about things to ourselves we naturally turn over a situation so many times that we can become trapped in our own poor conclusions. This technique works well for problem solving but not for emotions. We spin and stir and at the end of the day sacrifice time in joy with time in anxiety, time when we feel nauseated, distressed, in blaming ourselves for our own shortcomings in a situation that most likely, isn’t real to begin with.
I used to have terrible anxiety attacks as a result of a medication that I am taking. They usually occurred between 10 pm and 3 am and would toss me into the realm of full blown, hyperventilation and panic. The first time it happened I discretely excused myself from the table and took some medicine for it. The medicine only took it down about 50% and it was so massive that 50% reduction was still not enough to even grasp for a rational thought. Thankfully, that only happens rarely and the attacks are almost wimpy compared to their counterparts. I learned when I was struck awake to tell myself that what I was feeling was not real and to calm the racing thoughts. Sometimes I was so successfull at this that I was able to go back to sleep right away. Other times, it took some winding down time to feel at ease again.
I spend little time “at ease”. The worry about the fire and this mornings possible miscommunication feels real to me. I should know better about paper tigers but as hard as I try to balance my anxiety with my propensity for rational thought, I can’t seem to successfully reduce this mountain of useless, harmful emotion. This one may take me several days to work through on extremely limited feedback. I will throw myself into yoga, work, social time, the dogs, my renovation project and particularly Rotary (as I am behind on some of my goals) but these are distractions, not solutions. The solution is peace. It is acceptance that I sometimes have these powerful fear based emotions and then letting them go. At moments like this, I feel that I have a better shot at splitting the atom.
