Anxiety Strikes Again

 Anxiety strikes again. I have talked a few times on this blog about anxiety in general and my own struggles with anxiety. And every once in a while my anxiety rears its ugly head in an expected way and we talk about it again. That’s probably the biggest pain about anxiety. You think you have it in check and have made it your bitch and then you find yourself in a situations having intense anxiety thinking what the hell? You know what makes that feeling even better? When it happens in front of someone you have just recently met and has no idea that you struggle with anxiety. Welcome to the story that inspired this blog.

A few weeks ago I went on a date with a new fella and we hit it off right away. Only hitch was he was getting ready to move for work and would be residing in a city about 3 hours from where I live. We decided not to let the distance stop our relationship from moving forward since things were going so well, so last weekend I went to visit him. The city he is living in is quite a bit bigger than the city I live in and more importantly I had been to this city a grand total of one time before this and driving in unfamiliar cities is one of the things that sets of my anxiety pretty quickly.

 So I set off Friday afternoon with my map and directions in hand, directions mind you I had read SEVERAL times prior to leaving. I only got turned around once and successfully made it to the hotel with minimal issue, but I had been so tense driving I felt like I just finished a marathon when I arrived. This is what driving in unfamiliar places does to me. So now that you know that, let’s fast forward to Saturday morning.

Saturday morning we get in the car and are headed to an art museum (which I had looked up directions for from the hotel), as we pull out of the parking lot my fella says I want to show you downtown before we go to the art museum. I said okay but you will need to tell me where we are going and how to get back to the art museum. He agreed an off we go. We get to the middle of downtown the freeway is about to split in about 6 different directions and I ask okay which way are we going? My fella says I don’t know.  Excuse me what? He says just figure it out, this is how you learn a new city. I'm immediately anxious and losing my mind, what do you mean you don’t know, I told you to figure this stuff out, I don’t need to learn to navigate this city I don’t freakin live here. These are all things flying out of my mouth as I’m desperately trying to remember the address of the museum so I can put it in my GPS. (Just for the record I don’t recommend ever typing anything while driving on the highway).

 Fear not we eventually made it to the art museum and I calmed down and we had a wonderful time. However this happened again on Sunday when I was dropping off my fella before I left town. This time he didn’t have an address of where he was going and he was navigating on sight. That time we got into a little bit more of an argument because again my anxiety was spiking pretty high. Ultimately we got to where we were going got him dropped off and I got myself headed home.

As I was making the three hour drive home it finally started to click to me that anxiety was the reason I had gotten worked up (yep sometimes it even take a therapist a while to connect the dots of her own brain). And then I started thinking about how much of this do I explain to a guy I haven’t known all that long and how I do even go about doing that. I have been very blessed in my life that I haven’t had to explain my anxiety to too many people, many of the people in my life have been very understanding without much conversation or explanation.

While thinking all this through on the way home I was also found myself concerned with how he would react. Would he understand? Would he respect my need for a little more planning or would he continue to think the best way to help me is to put me in incredibly uncomfortable situations thinking he was helping. As I contemplated all these different questions I also started to get angry. Angry that my brain works this way and gets all worked up over things that really aren’t a huge deal. Angry that my anxiety had interfered with my weekend and caused us to get in not one but two arguments that just weren’t necessary.

By the time I got home I was exhausted, not just from a fun filled weekend but from having to spend SO MUCH time thinking about how to introduce a new person in my life into the craziness that is having an anxious brain. If I had to guess I would imagine that many of you out there struggling with anxiety can relate to this on many levels. Coping with anxiety can be exhausting in and of itself. Explaining your anxiety to people have been in your life for years and you know care about you can be a challenge. Finding the courage to overcome anxiety and meet NEW people can be a HUGE challenge. And then you get through all those hurdles and you find yourself in a situation where you feel you have to explain yet again, and to a new person, why you are freaking out over something that you know isn’t a big deal.

Some days it can all feel like it’s more work than it’s worth. But I think we can all agree that we know that isn’t true. Yes there are times when we are rejected by people we care about and who we thought cared about us because of our anxiety. But the times you find someone to add to your support army, who gets it or at least tries to get it and can be there for you makes it all worth it.

As for my current situation. I haven’t talked with him about my anxiety in the days that I have been back, and I’m still not sure how I want to go about it or how much I want to share with a person I don’t know very well yet. He did notice my scars over the weekend and didn’t run away screaming so maybe there is hope for this one yet ;). If any of you have suggestions or techniques you use when you are telling someone about your struggles with anxiety, I would love to hear them so leave me a comment below.

                                           *All images were taken from Google Images*

Life's like a Tree, Sometimes Ya Gotta Prune It.

The idea of pruning has been on my mind a great deal in the past few weeks. Merriam Webster defines pruning (verb) as "to reduce especially by eliminating superfluous matter or to cut off or cut back parts of for better shape or more fruitful growth." Every spring and fall I spend a couple of weekends pruning the landscaping at my house. Partly because I want it too look nice and neat but also because the trees and hedge will grow better if all the dead and dying parts are removed. You can help shape how a tree or plant will grow through pruning, cutting low branches will keep things growing up for example. It’s funny to think that removing parts of living thing in such a traumatic way as cutting them off could actually help something become more fruitful in the future. But it’s true, every time I prune back the hedges they seem to grow taller and faster.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to spend this whole post talking about my landscaping adventures. Although there have been some dozies, but that is a different post. I bring up my adventures in landscaping because much like my hedges, we often find that we have to prune parts of our lives back or out so that we can become more fruitful and grow in the ways that we need and want to. Pruning in our lives can mean many different things, sometimes its cutting back on behavior that is holding us back. Maybe it means letting go of an activity to make room for something else that brings more joy or purpose to your life. And still other times it means that the relationships in our lives need to change or end. However, one thing is for certain, it is hard and it can be painful to prune the places in our lives that need to be pruned.

The last 6 months, for me, have been filled with pruning. Some of you may know a little of what has been going on from my previous post about letting go. If you haven’t seen it you can check that out here. But the quick rundown is that in May I had a minor house fire in the midst of a remodeling project and then in July, through circumstances out of my control, I decided to give up the goal of completing my first half marathon. Both of those events were the catalyst for some very deep reflection and ultimately pruning in my life.

Some of that pruning has come in the form of me needing to change my behaviors and choices, mainly in terms of MAKING time to take care of myself. I love my job, but it should come as no surprise that my job can be very stressful. When I was in grad school the continually beat us over the head with idea that we needed to take care of yourself, and we were all like yeah yeah we know, and we came up with these great ideas and plans (it really was good to start thinking about it then). But ya know what happened. Life happened, I forgot to calculate that I still had a life outside of my profession which includes friends, animals, house work, and caring for myself as an adult (you know eating, showering, laundry etc). All of the sudden all the time I planned or self-care got sucked up with other things.

The events of this summer FORCED me to re-evaluate how I was spending my time in the evenings. Ultimately I had to convince myself that it was okay if the dishes didn’t get done EVERY night so that I could have time to journal or color or whatever other rejuvenating things I wanted to do. I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist (ssshh don’t tell anyone) so letting go of getting things done to sit and color was a challenge, but I felt SO MUCH better when I would, that ultimately that wasn’t a HUGELY painful transition or pruning in the end but it was/is still challenging a times.

My "self-care" corner of the couch :)

This summer has also caused a re-evaluation of the relationships in my life. You can learn a great deal about a person and the nature of your relationship when you are going through a crisis or a particularly challenging time. I have a fantastic support system and wonderful friends that were there for me. However there have been a couple of people in my life that have made things more difficult or have done or said hurtful things through this whole course of events. At the time I was hoping that they were just crappy in a crisis, because let’s be honest some people don’t handle crisis well and that’s okay.

However after several conversations it became apparent that there was more amiss in our relationship than just a poor response to a crappy situation. The crappy situation had just highlighted the trouble that was already there. So now I am faced with what I find to be the most challenging and painful part of pruning and that is consciously and deliberately putting space and new boundaries in place in these relationships. That’s the painful part.

I’ve been in this place before, and while everyone is different and you never know how someone is going to react I know that once the pruning is done I will be free to grow and flourish. About 5 years ago I was in a similar place with another friend. I kept putting off talking to her because I didn’t want to lose the friendship, I thought we had been through too much to not get things worked out. And I knew that what I was going to tell her was going to hurt her. It was a difficult conversation, but once it was done I felt like a weight was lifted. I didn’t realize how much that relationship was weighing me down until I did some pruning and felt the change, the growth, start to take place. I still miss that friendship from time to time (we had been friends for close to 10 years and truly had been through a lot together) but I know that I would not be the person I am today had I continued to carry that dying branch.

So as we continue to move through Fall, and the leaves change and those of us with landscaping are working to prune the trees and bushes, I pose the question, are there areas of your life that need to be pruned? And if so, what do you think is holding you back from doing that pruning? Like I said, pruning can be painful and seem like an odd way to spur growth. But I will tell you this for sure, the last 6 months have been hard for me and there have been a lot of tears, and there will probably be some more before the pruning is done but I have also grown more as a person in the last 6 months than I have in the last 3 years. And I know, things are just going to get better.