Hyper Awareness as a Superpower or Albatross?

I’m sitting at home on a Tuesday night, wearing my comfy gray sweatpants and eating some pre-Halloween candy. I’m pretending like Boof reffing a football game is the reason I didn’t go to yoga, even though I cancelled the childcare I had lined up. I’ve wanted to stay in, play legos with Potamus, and watch all the shows that have been sitting on my DVR. With November rapidly approaching I am feeling this prickly feeling inside, which I’m trying to ignore. Part of living with depression and anxiety is treading the very fine line of hyper-awareness and making a mountain out of a molehill.

My anxious mind starts to spin, asking the questions “why am I not going to yoga? Am I depressed? Do I want to sleep more because I’m depressed? Am I angry at work because I’m depressed? It’s only October and I’m not doing things I normally do, am I going to fall into a deep dark depression and become a crazy person who can’t take care of her child and ends up being committed into a hospital, and thus losing my job, and getting a divorce, and living in a box in pioneer square shooting heroin?”

You can see, the spiraling anxious thoughts actually contribute to depression, though this hyper awareness has saved my life before. It’s prompted me to notice when my exhaustion has become depression without falling into the deep hole I used to get into as a teenager. It has prompted me to go on medication less than 24 hours after having homicidal/suicidal thoughts postpartum. It has helped me make the decision to every year go on antidepressants in November and self-wean in the spring. Hyper awareness has been a super power that I have harnessed.

And yet, here I am, snuggled in my house wearing sweats and having no motivation to brave the rainstorm outside. I’m not apathetic, I’m quiet. I’m not depressed, I’m introspective. My hyper awareness is rearing it’s head because in the past these have been warning signs. That fine line between being overly tired from working/parenting and the tiredness from biological brain chemistry tricking me into wanting to sleep for days and days. I wake up every day excited to go to work, despite the dramas that happen by noon. I might leave every day frustrated and in a mood to co-ruminate with coworkers, but every morning I look forward to going back. I feel spontaneous, cancelling childcare and taking a trip to Target to indulge in the new Tay Swift CD and a bucket of legos for Potamus. Rather than isolation, I’m craving connection, but in a quiet autumn way.

I’m sleeping so fucking fantastically that I want to stay sleeping. Not because depression has taken over, but because for three years I haven’t gotten more than two-three hours in a row. Thanks to Potamus wanting to sleep in his own bed (for SEVEN HOURS last night!) and the marijuana that keeps my body from revolting from restful sleep (by having to pee all the time or having midnight anxiety thoughts), I am getting 8+ hours a night. It feels so glorious that it’s no wonder I want to repeat it again and again and again every night because who knows how many night sleeps I’ve lost (and who knows when I might lose them again!). It all makes me wonder, is this how normal people feel when the Fall comes around? The desire to stay inside, eat chilli and drink cider, and gossip with friends around the fire.

I want the sensitivity to my ‘symptoms’ to be used for good, and not as an albatross around my neck. I don’t want to rush headlong into depression because I’ve misread the signs along the way. I don’t want to treat myself as depressed when I’m not. And yet I don’t want to let myself get away with depressed thoughts/behavior that might come up, because I know how to take care of myself. It’s such a fine line of redefining and deciphering what is ‘normal’ behavior and what is a problem. Living with mental illness is such a delicate dance.

Panic at the Disco

anxiety…it’s SO awesome (not)

The summer after high school graduation, I had a panic attack. It was disguised as an asthma attack (an illness I had been battling for a few years), and left me feeling ‘freaked out’ and short of breath. I had taken my inhalers, a nebulizer treatment, and finally had to have an ambulance called to take me from my job as a lifeguard to the local hospital, where they pronounced me fine. It wasn’t until I was in graduate school, studying mental health, that I realized oh…that’s what that was.

I have known for a long time that depression has been present in my life. But it wasn’t until my mid 20’s, when I went on antidepressants, that I realized how much a bigger problem anxiety was in my life. When my parents would ask “what are you worried about?” I didn’t have an answer, other than “I’m not worried.” Because I didn’t realize that thinkingalotofthingsalotofthetimeespeciallyinthemiddleofthenightwhenishouldbesleeping was anxiety. It was all I knew. My brain and I didn’t have any other point of reference, and this random word WORRY had no meaning to me.

If we’re getting technical, my diagnosis is Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which basically means everything and nothing specific make me anxious. It’s not a conscious thought process, more like a hum in the background of my mind, like listening to the radio in-between the dial of stations. It only is pronounced sometimes, like at night. Medication helps.

But lately I’ve been having unexplained symptoms. Painful stomach aches. A shortness of breath. A heartburn crackling fire that radiates from my breastbone out into my ribs and feels like my chest might shatter like an egg or a rock hurtling through a window. A swirling of thoughts that make me feel like I’m running around the room doing crazy off the wall things, while I also know that I am really just lying very still. With exception of that one “asthma attack” as an adolescent, the only other time I’ve had an episode like this was during labor, where the pain spiraled my mind into a complete crazy mess and I had to take meds to calm-the-fuck-down so I could birth the baby.

Maybe it’s a new manifestation of my anxiety disorder. Maybe it’s something else entirely. I don’t know. But in reading over the definitions again, of panic attacks, it seems to fit the criteria. So why is this happening out of the blue? And why, when the literature talks about this sudden wave of fear happening, don’t I experience that? I feel all these physical symptoms, and am bothered, uncomfortable,  want them to go away, but haven’t (yet) spiraled into a fear of them happening or even register what I’m feeling as fear, more of just a general annoyance.

So frustrating. I know I’ve been off my medication for a few months, and maybe going back on will help. It’s just weird that my body is reacting like this, especially since I know, and utilize, all the good relaxation techniques and have been avoiding triggers like caffeine. I then wonder…am I really just having an asthma attack and not knowing it? Am I sick or sensitive to foods and that’s why my stomach keeps hurting? WTF body, WTF?!

 

 

**********UPDATE**********

In graduate school, one of my instructors made sure to emphasize that if a NEW symptom of an already diagnosed disorder, or if a NEW SET of symptoms (indicating possibly a new disorder) presents themselves, then it is most like a physical issue that can be addressed before jumping to the ‘I have a new mental illness’ diagnosis.

After waking up from my nap, feeling the tell-tale signs of post-nasal drip, I decided to google sinus infection + anxiety. Apparently others have dealt with sinus infections exacerbating anxiety, and even causing (contributing to?) panic attacks. Whoa. Guess it’s time to up the neti pot…sudafed…and possibly get seen by my Dr….

Oh, and start back on my antidepressants, too. 🙂

How to Pass the Time when You’re Waiting To Hear That Your Student Is Not Dead…

“I want to die! I want to die!” is not the first thing you want to read in your Monday morning email. Especially when the email was sent at 2:24 am on Saturday, a day you don’t work nor check email. Boundaries are super important in this job, and I make sure to live up to the boundaries that I set with my students. This isn’t the 24/7 crisis work that I used to do, and technically I am not even acting in the counseling capacity for my students, but when I read an email like that my heart skips a beat (or 12).

Because I care a great deal about students, and I also take suicidal ideation seriously.

I know, as a mental health counselor, that there is a difference between wanting to die and wanting to kill myself but without the ability to do a face-to-face assessment I cannot determine the level of threat in this email. And with a student not responding to my response email(s) or phone call, I am left in the emotional lurch.

Tomorrow, at noon, I will put a welfare check out on this student, per the college’s recommendation. But, in the meantime, my heart feels bound up and my normally boundaries-of-steel are crumbling into an almost state of panic.

I’ve never lost a student to suicide. I am frank in my lectures and in my last assessment with the student I am confident they were in a depressed state but had no suicide ideation, let alone any means or plan. I am confident in that. And yet…and yet…that email…and how quickly things can spiral.

In the meantime, while I wait for that return email, or that police knock on their door, I am drinking beer and folding underwear. Because nothing puts the world at ease like sorting panties into sexy and period piles on my coffee table. I have to live this way, one foot in front of the other…focus on the mundane, the real, the things I can control right now.

And wait.

Waiting is the hardest part.

And for those of you that vibe or shake or pray or drum or send good thoughts…you wanna send them my student’s way?

Thanks.

Bearing Witness to Student’s Lived Experience

In the past few weeks I have realized something: my job as an instructor/adviser is just as hard as it was as a crisis counselor. Though the schedule is much easier, the fact that I am simply in a position to bear witness to lives, rather than be the person to actively help seek the resources and see immediate change, is where the exhaustion is coming in. I know that I was built for this work, but lately there are several students who have been heavy on my heart. So heavy that I downloaded Anne Lamott’s new book Stitches and am flipping through it, because she talks about the utter fuckedupness of the world and how we stand and face all the cruelty in situations that often don’t have any ‘meaning’ (she cites the Newton shooting, for example.) Her words give me comfort.

So I’m nestled in my pajamas, at 4:30 pm on a Wednesday, drinking red wine and watching Jake & The Neverland Pirates with Potamus and musing about the fate of my students. And I’m sad, and angry (at parents and schools that have failed my students) and excited and proud, but also this feeling that is deeper than all of that, something about awe and heartache mixed with immense fear and hope. It’s hard to express adequately, ya know?

This week I had a student tell me that in their photography class they were instructed to take “street shots” and so they were in a piss-filled alley taking photos of graffiti. And they struck up a conversation with a homeless man, who spilled his life story, and after an hour the photographer moved on to a different location…getting two blocks away before they heard screams. And when they turned back into the alley, the homeless man had been stabbed to death by someone on drugs. A man who had previously lost his wife and daughter in a car accident and had chosen the homeless lifestyle, donating all of his posessions to charity, in order to “start over.” If heaven exists then maybe he’s met by his daughter and wife, but only minutes before my 17 year old student had been chatting with him, taking his photo. And then he was dead, just like that. And my student witnessed it.

How do you make sense of that? How do I hold the space for that story, for the emotions that go with it, without trying to solve it or make it all magically better?

What about the student who told me they missed class last week because they were arrested and with 1 week until their 18th birthday are most likely going to be charged as an adult and sent to prison? This student who I found on the news was selling close to 300 “molly” and crystal meth pills at a local rave. My student fessed up to their actions, but still? And school is the best option for them right now, but my heart is heavy because prison is the real deal and all the hard work to get on the right track were blown in a night.

How do I hold that?

And the students who have been writing about their drug addictions and the process of getting clean. Or their experience being in lockdown psych wards for psychotic breaks. Or the 11 concussions and expulsion from high school because they didn’t pass their class but no teacher gave any accommodations for the sports related injuries. My students are struggling with SO MANY things. And they come every day, and write about SMART goals, and learn study habits, and sometimes they do it when they haven’t eaten for a day or two, or don’t know where they’re going to live.

I admire their tenacity. Their ability to rise above the challenges that no kid should have to face…homelessness, drug addictions, abuse, mental illness, physical illness, natural disasters, etc. I bear witness and have to sit with their stories and know that maybe that is enough. When I can’t do anything but smile at them, and tell them hello, and hear their lives in a way that many educators haven’t done in the past. Is it enough? I have no idea. But I hope that it makes some small difference…

Anxiety

In the first three days of the week I had the sum total of 14 hours of sleep. That’s about 10 hours less than normalish, and way less than the ideal. It wasn’t because Potamus has been sleeping poorly, he’s doing good despite his teething pain, it’s that I’ve felt the rise of anxiety once again. I haven’t yet figured out why I get these moments of utter stuckness in the anxiety loop. I know I begin ruminating, literally obsessing, over whatever the anxiety-trigger is, and the spiral goes on until I fall asleep from utter exhaustion.

I know what I could do and it’s not working. I’m on meds. I do relaxation exercises. I get up and walk around. I tell Boof I’m anxious. I practice yoga regularly. And the anxiety is still there. It hangs around despite the sunshine. It lingers in back alleys of my mind, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and wearing a faded leather jacket he probably picked up at the Goodwill. And then, just as soon as it comes, it goes. I get good sleep a few more nights, and it comes back. I just can’t figure it out and I know that in trying to figure it out I’m trying to control it…to say if XYZ happens then I will do ABC and the anxiety will go away. But I haven’t figured out the magic formula, and so I wonder….

What would it be like if I just accepted that the anxiety will be there, and I don’t know when it will come or go, but my life won’t be free from it. Would that help? Or is trying to use  mindfulness once again trying to control the anxious spinning thoughts? And, if I am to just accept the anxiety, how do I go about doing it?

How do YOU handle anxious or worried thoughts?

Motherhood with Mental Illness…or Introverted Parentingis hard…or how I yelled at my kid because I was being a cranky-pants.

This is the face of a mentally ill mother…

A few days after posting a happy-clappy sunshine post about how WONDERFUL motherhood has been lately, I had one of those 0-60 moments where I just couldnotfreakingdealwithitanymore. Granted, I think some of my frustration stemmed from an awesome weekend of hanging out with friends. I forget, as an introvert, that sometimes even just hanging out in small groups of friends can be exhausting and paired with not going to be early (because of aforementioned hanging out), I go through some moments where I am worn thin and don’t even realize it (because I’ve been having fun). It was a really lovely weekend, overall, I managed to behave myself at Easter dinner and participate in mind-numbing small-talk with Boof’s second cousins, and watched Potamus dance to music and explore their boxes of toys, and ate some yummy food.

And then 8:30 pm hit and Potamus wasn’t asleep. Well, after a struggle, where I told him stories and explained how sleep would help, and did his progressive muscle relaxation, and nursed him, and snuggled him, and rubbed his back, he was asleep. And I sneaked out to watch a much needed episode of Millionaire Matchmaker. Five minutes in he was crying, unconsolably, and Boof was off getting gas for his car, so I was alone, and tired and tried to get him to fall back asleep but it kept getting worse until I yelled:

JUST STOP!

My very embarassed and rational Monday-morning mind hates admitting that AND acknowledges that shouting at a screaming toddler doesn’t actually make the situation better. Ever.

In order to put a stop to my self-shaming, I told Boof what I had done. And I looked my son in the eye, this morning, and told him I was sorry. He might not understand what I was saying, but it was something I needed to do. He was in his high chair and I said,

“buddy, I’m sorry about last night. I yelled at you and that wasn’t fair. You weren’t doing anything wrong, you were trying to tell me something (he was majorly hungry, scarfing down yogurt and crackers when Boof came home and I handed Potamus to him). I’m sorry that I scared you and that you were sad and didn’t understand what was going on.”

I almost started to cry in this apology, looking in his eyes when I said it, and I felt so humble before this quizzical toddler. He looked like he understood what I was saying, and while I’m not sure it will curb all yelling, it was a moment that made think about how I will speak to him in the future. There was something about getting down, looking him in the eye and realizing, again, that he is a person with thoughts and feelings and my crazy frustration level at his inability to communicate is NOT OKAY.

When I step back, and try to analyze the “whys” of what happened, I wonder…is it because of my depression/anxiety? Is it because I’m a burnt-out itnrovert at the end of a long weekend and I need to do some more self-care before I do self-implosion? Am I just a struggling mom who isn’t perfect? A combination of all three? Do I just have ridiculous expectations of myself? Do other mothers yell at their toddlers when they are frustrated?