Last Week #30 | Here Comes the (Love) Anxiety

 So this week I discovered that I am actually capable of what my therapist told me to try last week. Which was: take the pressure off yourself to get so much done, and see if it all still gets done anyway. This should have been a no-brainer for me. Of COURSE it will still get done! I should have thought. I didn’t. It was so hard for me to let go of the worry and anxiety this week, and trust that it would still get done in the end. But you know what? It DID. I realized that worrying in my down time doesn’t make the work get done any faster, it only makes me more exhausted by the time I have time to work. So I can’t do work. So, in essence, worrying about being productive makes me LESS productive. And I know what you might be thinking: But Fran, duh! Worrying gets you nowhere. Just relax and chill out! And to that I would say: HA. Because sure, I learned a valuable lesson about behavioral tricks this week. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still have anxiety. Anxiety means that all of my efforts are just that— efforts. Sure, they can help to rewire my brain and combat the negativity up there, but in the end, my anxiety is still gonna do what it wants to do sometimes. 

With anxiety, if it’s not one thing it’s another. Sure, I got a lot of work done this week. I made progress on my projects for my drawing class, and felt good about the other work I am doing. But I still feel bad and guilty and anxious about not being a better friend this week, sometimes, all the time. But the difference is, I now know that worrying about it isn’t going to change anything. That doesn’t mean I don’t still worry. This kind of ingrained behavior doesn’t go away overnight. But I now have a little voice in the back of my head telling me to relax, it’s okay, it’ll all be fine.

Yoga this week taught me just as much. As I stretched and twisted my body, and felt the pain that comes with not doing yoga for a while, I realized that this pain so obviously symbolizes life. You feel the pain, but it will pass. And learning that fact (“it will pass”) is one of the most valuable lessons, and something that will get you through both yoga and life. The thing is, when I feel pain my brain is like “UUUUUM bitch you are gonna die if you don’t end this right now.” So I panic and stop whatever I’m doing that’s causing me pain instead of working, pushing, breathing through it. I was afraid I was going to do that with Eli, with this job, with my apartment. But I haven’t, and my life is so much better, so much more as a result. 

Full disclosure, I still freaked out a little bit this week too. (You win some and you lose some.) Long story short, I watched my favorite movie (Amelie), and wigged out about the fact that I was nostalgic for her lost-ness, for her alone-ness. I worried that my wanting alone-ness meant I no longer loved Eli, and then my brain got out of control. It went haywire. I quite literally pushed Eli away, had a total meltdown, cried myself to sleep, woke up and cried some more. Then I sent him a lengthy, completely insane message that was full of my fear and anxiety and sadness. To which he replied, “Ok Fran.. you can do whatever you need to and I will understand- go see your mom, just lay there alone for today, go drive by yourself, idk whatever you need.  But all I can say / all I know is this:

I love you, I love coming home to you, I love when you come home to me, I love "seeing the world" with YOU, I *love when we figure out an argument and solve the problem together and it's all 100% ok, I love being with you.” 

Yeah. I f*cking know. He’s a goddamn unicorn. Always has been, always will be. Another thing my therapist recommended last week was composed of two simple words. “Trust. Eli.” Which is admittedly hard for me, despite the fact that he’s wonderful, because I am hard-wired to believe that I am the only one who can (and should) fix my problems. I’m the only one who will have the right solution. That, my friends, is called a control freak. I am one. But the difference now is, I’m trying not to be. 

Finally, before and after all this learning, I had a breakthrough. I realized on Tuesday that the reason I've felt unhappy, unfulfilled, and like I haven't been taking care of myself, is that I haven't been doing creative things for me. If you don't know, that's an enormous part of my personality. I'm the kind of person who's always doing a lot. That's just how I work. But lately, my time has been not-so-equally split between: work, schoolwork, and time with Eli and friends. Let me put this plainly: I HAVE NOT BEEN WRITING. I have not been CREATING. That's like...Beyonce not working on an album. It's just not good for anyone involved. So in a crazy leap of faith, I joined NaNoWriMo at the last second. Let me be clear: I'm not doing NaNoWriMo as it is usually done. I'm not writing 50,000 words and striving for 1,667 per day. But I've made it a priority to work on my in-progress novel, and give it the time, energy, and thought it deserves. Because not working on it has made me feel worse than the effort of finding time for it has. Another thing: Eli and I discovered that we like to read together. I think the problem I've been having is that the past year of our relationship has been so environmentally rocky. By that I mean, we've never known when we would see each other next, or if we were able to: where we would even spend time together. Now, knowing that we always have a place to come home to and relax and be together is so relieving, we almost don't know what to do with it. It's going to take us some time to get used to this. To relax, and realize that we have all the time in the world. This week, we tried that. We laid on my bed and he listened to an audiobook while I read The Walking Dead. And it was amazing! Uncovering this new element of our relationship, discovering that we can want to be together all the time, but that doesn't mean we have to talk or really even engage with each other the whole time. We can just sit next to each other and READ. What a freaking revelation. 

I know this blog post probably isn't perfect. But I'm trying to let go of the need for perfection. I'm trying to sink into the feeling that "it will pass." All of it. The bad, and the good. It will pass, and my challenge is to remain present and here through it all.

-Fran

Anxiously Aware

 May is mental health awareness month, so I wanted to take this time to talk about a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and so many others' as well.

 The scariest thing about mental illness isn't the illness itself, but the lack of awareness, appreciation, and sympathy people have for it. If someone says, "I have the flu" they are met with hoards of well-wishes and offers for medicine and pick-me-ups like soup or funny TV shows. But if someone says, "I have anxiety" or "I've been feeling really anxious lately," they are often met with comments like, "just calm down," "relax," "chill out," or are simply told that they're overreacting. There is an astounding lack of sympathy for sufferers of mental illness of any kind, not just anxiety.

 Anxiety is kind of like being in a room full of laser beams. You might successfully step over one just to collide with the next one, one you hadn't even previously known was there. And when you do come up against your fears and anxieties there are real, tangible consequences, as the symptoms of anxiety are a lot bigger than anyone understands. With anxiety (and many other mental illnesses), you're constantly dodging and weaving through a maze of worry and insecurity, and it is completely exhausting. But it's a silent struggle, and a lot of times it might not seem to other people like anything is actually wrong. So they tell you, "relax, it's fine" or, "you always worry for no reason," and that can make you second guess what you're feeling, and pretend it's not happening. No, it's fine. You might tell yourself. Other people do this and they're okay. I'm fine. But it's not fine, and this cultural apathy only serves to continue the pain and suffering, in situations where it might have been helped.

 What pains me the most as a sufferer myself, and someone who has been speaking fairly openly about my anxiety for about five years now, is that I still find myself apologizing when I tell someone what's going on with me. I'm still downplaying it, still using a smaller voice to try to make it seem like it's not a big deal. I find myself saying, "Oh, I've just been feeling kind of anxious lately..." and shrugging, like it's not totally kicking my ass. Like it doesn't make me want to completely give up sometimes. I've had anxiety since I was about seven years old, so I've had years to get to know it, and become familiar with the nitty gritty, ugly highs and lows of it. And yet even I still sometimes fall victim to this unfeeling and unforgiving cultural mindset about mental illness.

 What I'm saying is, there needs to be more sympathy for sufferers of mental illness, and it starts with us. If you suffer, please, treat yourself well. Try your best not to negate your feelings in your own mind. Allow yourself to feel bad, because in my experience admitting that you feel bad is the first step (on a sometimes long road) to feeling better. Do I still feel like total shit about the fact that going to the movies has been making me crazy anxious lately? Yes. Do I feel bad about the fact that I had to leave the theater a few weeks ago before the movie was even over because of this anxiety? Yes. Do I horribly guilty for making my boyfriend leave that movie as well? Yes. Do I feel bad about the fact that "normal" activities are harder for me, and require more thought and preparation beforehand than most? Yes. Am I afraid that something as small (and ordinarily FUN) as a simple road trip to Philadelphia might end in disaster? Yes. Am I sometimes I afraid that this will effect my whole life, that I'll never do the things I dream of because my anxiety will hold me back? Yes. Am I cripplingly afraid of letting fear control me? Yes would be an understatement.

 It's okay to admit all that, but it's also okay to cut yourself some slack. Do people with the flu apologize for sneezing? Well, maybe, if they do it impolitely and get someone else sick, but ordinarily-- NO. They are met with, and I'll say this word again for emphasis, SYMPATHY. Kindness. Well-wishes and pats on the back (even if it's from a distance and with hand sanitizer at the ready). So maybe it's high time we do the same for people with mental illness. Unlike the flu, it isn't catching. You don't have to avoid the subject for fear you'll catch it yourself. This month, I'd urge you to be more mindful, considerate, and open to conversation about mental illness, in the hopes that one day it will be a natural reflex rather than a conscious effort to be sympathetic about this topic.

 -Fran