I’m a bit behind on posting about my hundredth post, but better late than never!
Thank you all for reading, commenting, and following my blog!
It’s because of you that I reached 100 followers!
I’m eternally grateful for your encouragement, support, and friendship!
When I was twenty-two, I was diagnosed with general anxiety with periodic panic attacks.
Anxiety and panic, for me, are two different things. Panic attacks hit me in my head first, causing dizziness, followed by quickened heart rate, some perspiring, fear, and the like. With anxiety, it starts in the chest and causes helplessness, an impending sense of doom, as well as quickened heart rate.
Everyone who suffers from anxiety or panic attacks may share in some of the symptoms, but experiences them a bit differently and also has different triggers that set them off.
Mine is TIME.
I remember in my early twenties explaining this visual of my trigger of time as a rodent running on a wheel, getting nowhere while time and the world churned ahead without me. I desperately wanted to catch up but was helpless to in the moments of panic attacks.
When I had my first panic attack at age twenty, it felt like my head was going to spin right off my body, my heart raced, and I feared loss of mind and control. And as panic sufferers know, we become worried about it happening again, which perpetuates the panic feelings.
Eventually, after having a handful of full-blown panic attacks, I learned to be aware of when one was coming on, and talking to myself (in my head, not out loud) about it in a reasonable manner.
At that time in my early twenties, for four years, I was on an anti-anxiety medication for my anxiety and a tranquilizer for panic attacks. Both medications did the job of curbing my anxiety and panic attacks. After getting off the medication, my system seemed improved.
Since this time (over twenty years ago), I’ve faired pretty well, but since the onslaught of peri-menopause, my anxiety and panic attacks have been kicked up a notch, causing some disruption in my life.
At the end of June, I did some stupid things because of my anxiety, like mistakenly canceling my debit card.
I looked over my husband’s and my checking account and discovered a debit card purchase for a DVD from an unknown company. Worried and panic-stricken thinking somebody had gotten my card number, I went online and disputed the purchase. Immediately after I did that, my card was canceled.
It was at that moment I remembered the amount of the purchase and realized I did purchase this DVD. It was just that the company name didn’t match the place I ordered from.
Peri-menopausal fog brain mixed with anxiety is a recipe for chaos.
I called the bank the next day, and a new card was sent out for two-day delivery.
If I’d just waited and thought calmly for about five more minutes, I’m positive I would have remembered the amount and the place from which I purchased the DVD.
This was the day Whole Foods opened in my area, and I wanted to be there for the opening (I know, that alone is nuts). Obviously I didn’t have my debit card, but I did have my checkbook. That was a mistake because they didn’t take checks, so I had to run home and fetch my credit card that I’ve been desperately trying to pay down.
I could have just waited until the next day when my new debit card arrived and gone to Whole Foods then and not gone through all of this. But NO, I was anxious to go RIGHT NOW! If I didn’t go then, think of all the things I’d miss seeing on Opening Day!
Every time my anxiety hits, I become impatient and pushy. After the incident, I’d hate my actions and how I irritated my family members. Imagine this anxious impatience…it feels like a tornado of confusion, frustration, fear, and anger sweeping through you. At least it does for me.
After experiencing this impatience three days in a row, I broke down in tears of frustration and anger, really strongly disliking myself for my stupid actions and idiocy.
Where did my brain go?
The next few days and weeks I sat analyzing my actions and behavior. I finally saw this pattern of impatience and that it was actually tied to my anxiety.
It only took me 28 years to figure this out.
In any case, this was a breakthrough for me, a relief. I’d finally figured out what I was doing and why I was doing it.
But how was I going to stop doing it?
Anxiety pounces on me unexpectedly a lot of the time. The behavior and havoc almost always play out before I am aware of it.
Friends who suffer from anxiety and/or panic attacks, how do you experience them? How do you deal with them?
Being a person who tries to follow Christ, making an effort to be Christ-like daily, even though I fail most of the time, my anxiety causes me to forget to ask Him for help when I’m going through this. Too many times, I try to control these attacks all on my own.
This is the crux of my problem.
But I suppose I had to discover what I was doing before I could reach this point.
So, now that I know this, I am making the effort and becoming more aware to ask God to help me through these instances of impatience and anxiety.
I’m not really a fan of praying for patience, because…well…then your patience is tested, and I fail 99% of the time.
BUT…
In reality, it’s through those tests of my patience, that I am provided the chances to be patient and make it become more of a habit, and therefore, become more of who I want to be, which is a better, calmer, loving person with a closer relationship to Christ.
In the past few weeks, I’ve been able to apply patience to at least three occasions, by talking to myself, as a type of mental coach, and through God’s help.
Here’s to a new path toward a less anxiety-ridden life.
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Have you ever been to a place, or lived in a place that brought you such joy and peace that every day you looked out your window or stepped outside your door, you smiled at the grand and scenic landscape around you?
I grew up a military dependent, so we moved around every two to four years. I was painfully shy growing up, and it took me many months to make friends, and that friendship was enjoyed for a couple years or less, and then it was off to another place. The moves were difficult, but I adapted. I kept in touch with my friends over the years via actual snail mail that seems unheard of these days, but it was great fun the years my friends and I wrote each other. I still remember the excitement I felt when I got a letter from a friend.
The pattern of my emotions in each move consisted of initial sadness when I found out we were moving, to tingling anticipation in the last few weeks before moving day, wondering what the new place would be like.
Here’s a short history of where I’ve lived up to the place I found to be my happy haven. I was born in Maine, and from there moved to Taiwan, then Massachusetts, Virginia, Alabama, Germany, Illinois, Virginia again, and then Colorado. All the states and Germany (which was amazing, clean, and gorgeous) pretty much had the same climate–four seasons, humid and hot in the summers, various bugs depending on the area….bigger ones down South (ugh). So I knew no other type of climate other than hot, muggy buggy, and cold, humid in the winters. Until Colorado.
I remember when we drove into the state and I first stepped outside the car at the local Air Force Base’s gas station. We were headed to the TLF (temporary lodging facility) until the house Dad and Mom had purchased, was ready to move in, as it was a new house in a new subdivision down in Castle Rock. As soon as I stepped outside the vehicle, I noticed immediately the difference in the air. It was light, thin, and fresh. The sky was an incredible deep azure, with the sun shining so bright, it was nearly white. Although it was mid summer, it didn’t feel as oppressive as it had in Virginia, Illinois, or Alabama. And the first time I saw the Rocky Mountains, I caught my breath. They dominated the western landscape, and demanded respect. If it were at all possible in some type of sense, I fell in love with Colorado right then, and this has never dissipated.
I was blessed and lucky enough to have lived there twice. The first time was from 1987 to 1995, and the second time was from 2007 to 2013. Both times that I left this wonderful haven was not because I wanted to, but more because I didn’t really have a choice. The first time was when I was in my early twenties, and my job was being phased out, and therefore, I moved south to Northern Louisiana where my parents had moved months before me, and also where my sister had been living for many years because her husband was from there. The second time was because my husband believed he had a calling to the priesthood, and so we needed to go to Boston for him to attend the graduate school there. But for several reasons, his degree at that time didn’t come to pass, and because our house in Colorado was being rented out, we couldn’t go back to it, and at that time, my husband wasn’t sure if he’d return to school at a later date. Therefore, we ended up in Pennsylvania, the state in which my husband had grown up. Also, his family still resided there.
We settled in Lancaster, and struggled for the first year and half as my husband searched and applied for many jobs. Finally, he was hired last May in 2017 at a local school district.
Lancaster is a lovely area dotted with many farms, rolling hills, and Amish buggies.
We were fortunate to take a vacation back to Colorado in June of 2017 where we stayed at Estes Park in a beautiful, little rustic cabin and hiked the Rocky Mountain trails in Rocky Mountain National Park, and then visited our spiritual father and his family, and our parish family in Colorado Springs. It was a great respite that truly felt euphoric.
Lancaster is charming, but we knew when we moved into our rental home here and know now that it really is a temporary place in which we have been blessed to regroup, work out personal issues, heal, and grow.
We don’t know how long we’ll be in Lancaster. I only know that Colorado is always in my heart and in the back of my mind, and the urging to return never goes away. My husband feels the same way, which works out well for us; no arguments or disagreements on where we want to retire. God willing, we’ll return some time in the future to this glorious state that has me literally smiling and my heart soaring every time we drive into it and spot those majestic Rockies.
Do you have a place that makes you happy and causes your heart to swell?
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Modest Musings 