chookmojoSenior Contributor
Horrendous anxiety flare up
I just needed a place to 'talk' about this. Help me work it thorugh a bit maybe. Forgive the wall of words.
I have had anxiety ranging from so severe that it kept me house bound, to a sort of ever present but manageable level for many years. Really started in childhood but was just chalked up to being 'shy', and then 'needy' and then 'difficult' and then 'bad work ethic' and so on.
For the last 10 years or so I am have been mostly able to cope, hold down jobs (albeit with a lot of 'sickies'), maintain a couple of freindships, and manage most elements of daily life most of the time. I am now at a point where I work for a great organisation in the mental health sector, so I can be upfront about WHY I need to have time off sometimes, and a job that has recently blossomed into a career path.
Woke up ths morning with terrible anxiety - mostly triggered by a couple of shitty things coinciding that are going to require me to do a lot more of the stuff that makes me super anxious than usual, as well as being upsetting in and of themselves.
Usually the day after a long weekend I get a bit of anxiety (m y routine is disrupted and the increased time away form work makes it very hard to go back sometimes), but it is at a level I can push through. Today is BAD and I am not gonna make it to work. I have let my boss know and it is ok. But I still feel like shit taking a day off immediately after a long weekend. Like I am taking the piss. And I have to get on top of it, because it can easily blow out of control, the more days of work I miss the less likely I am to be able to get back.
I feel really frustrated because my life is SO pared down. I hardly ever go out, I keep stimulus to a minimum, I take a battery of supplements, I have healthy practices in place, I have safety nets built in all over the place to ward off bad spells like this and they STILL bloody happen.
I want to be able to have a little bit more from life, not much, just a smidge, but I am already living right up to the line that I can manage, and over it sometimes. Over the weekend I was thinking wistfully of trying to start jogging again, something I love but which I have not had the spare emotional energy for quite a while. I was thinking about trying to find a psychologist to get some help for the billionth time, and about seeing a physio for my shoulder which needs rehab. I can't DO any of it. Can't actually face any of it right now. And this is the optional stuff. Right now I can't face the stuff that I do, absolutely need to do - which is also the main stuff upsetting me.
I get a spell like this and something has to give, something that matters to me, like work, or going to the gym or seeing a friend (something I only get to do once every couple of months anyhow) because I just don't have enough resources to handle it. And I don't have much left that I can cut down on.
I have already had to cut down my sessions with my trainer form 3 times a week to 2 times a week because I was not coping with having to leave the house on Saturdays - it was killing my weekend productivity (which then causes me major anxiety). I don't have anything except the gym left that I can cut out really and I really don't want to do that - I don't think I have anough oomph left in me to keep at it on my own. I am working on setting up a home gym (this involves a fairly major overhaul of the garage) so I can at least have a trainer come to me instead of having to go out, but because I have been so drained on weekends this is taking months and months. If I quit training now there is no telling how long it will take to get up again.
I get so frustrated feeling like 'nobody' gets it. 'Nobody' understands that I am pushing myself to the limit every single day that I make it out of the house, and even on the days that I don't make it. It is so god damned HARD sometimes, and I have so little to show for it. People don't realise what the little I have costs me to keep, the sheer number of things I have to give up just in order to be able to do what I can do and they are ALWAYS pushing me to do more in a million little ways that they don't even see as being significant because for them it is easy, so easy that it is invisible.
So I just wanted to post a bit of a whinge on here, where I know there are people who do 'get it', and maybe try to convince myself that I am not tanking my job and my life in one day over nothing.
