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. 🙂

Maxed Out…this American mom is on the brink…

“We were all living the lives we’d chosen. We had what we thought we wanted- wonderful children and a level of financial independence that our mothers never knew. And yet, most days, it felt as if our lives were being held together by Band-Aids and Elmer’s glue. None of us could make sense of the wretched state we found ourselves in. What were we doing wrong?”

After forwarding a powerful  article  on burned out mothers to a friend, we decided to buy the book mentioned in the article (Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink), and have been sending rapid fire texts and quotes to each other ever since. Because this book has spoken to us. It speaks to my greatest fear, and how I’ve actually been feeling for a few weeks now. That everything is held together by Band-Aids and Elmer’s glue.

Katrina goes on to explain, “The last few months had been a carnival ride of constant motion that left me dizzy and sick to my stomach. I wanted off. I wanted someone to pull the brake. I wanted to make it stop, but I didn’t know how to make it stop. I  ddn’t even know what stopping meant.”

Um, who can relate? Whoa.

Her book is so honest and real in chronicling the trials and tribulations of working motherhood. It left me feeling validated, but most of the time I read it and vacillated between being completely freaked out about the future with a potential 2nd child and feeling like ‘I got this,’ because part of what she talked about what the magical aspect of working part-time. She called them “Magic Fridays” when she had a 4 day work week, which is a phrase I think I’m going to borrow. But…there was one piece that I’m still chewing on.

Because, when I take a step back, which is like a layman’s term for almost depersonalizing, I realize that there is actually nothing in my life right now that should be making me feel this crazy-carnival way. My husband and I have been in a really good place. Potamus is teething, but sleeping much more, and we’re down to one time nursing. My class is going pretty well and my advising schedule isn’t too crammed. Flexible job. Yoga class. Therapy. From the outside of my own mind, looking at my life, I’m actually in a really calm content place. And yet…..and yet…I’m not.

I know that everyone has different thresholds, but I’m actually not okay. I feel like I might start crying at any moment over any little thing. So I’m back on my meds. I got the prescription filled yesterday, and hopefully they’ll kick in next week. I felt like I was heading toward this cliff and I didn’t want to go there again. Because even my coworkers and students have noticed a change in my mood this last week especially. My irritation with things being out of place in the classroom is an all time high.

And part of me worries that if I am like this with one kid, what will happen if I have another? I know that’s a long way off from needing to think about, that I get to just enjoy the next several months and don’t even have to talk about it, and trying to project how I’m going to feel into the future isn’t really that great anyway, because it’s rarely true. Though, if I’m totally honest, thinking about it too much might send me into a panic attack.

Where is the line between intuition and anxiety? Because, in my mind’s eye, I can see us having another child. Feeling that completion feeling that I really do want. And I can also see myself having a nervous breakdown in the same picture. That just the stress of two kids, even a part-time job, and doing all the parenting things that are never ending, will kill me. That’s how it feels. I know the reality is one step at a time, but I do get terrified. Because:

“The line between ‘Everything’s okay’ and ‘I’m on the verge of total collapse’ is so thin.”

So true. And yet, when I finished the book, I felt really hopeful. Because, while I might feel on the edge a lot, I’m not alone. And I have supportive friends, partner, and am taking all the really good steps to beat back the anxiety and depression. And I’m learning more about myself, like going back on meds when I see the train-wreck coming, or choose to NOT go to yoga because I had been gone every night of the week and just wanted to relax (which feels different than just not going because I’m anxious/depressed), and taking sweet advantage of my Magic Friday today to rest while Potamus was resting.

Moms, I recommend this book. Working moms, I definitely recommend this book. Mom with anxiety, read this book. It’s so good.

What have you read lately that’s spoken to you? Inspired you? Made you feel less alone?

 

Great Expectations

From what little I know of Buddhist and Hindu and other yogic-type meditative philosophies, is that expectations are what get us into trouble. We get disappointed and feel hurt and upset unnecessarily, rather than the simplicity of just experiencing what is, rather than wishing something was different.

The topic of expectations came up in my mind this morning after I dropped Potamus off with grandma. She was talking about my night and I was complaining about Boof’s long work schedule and his attendance at a soccer match, leaving me home alone to deal with Potamus and Scrummy by myself. In my complaint was this underlying expectation that my husband should be home at a reasonable hour (like 5, instead of 8…or 10 because of the Sounder’s game), and help me out with the boy-child.

Expectations.

As I was leaving, and beating myself up for once-again complaining to my mother-in-law about HER son, I had an imaginary argument with my father-in-law, because arguing with myself is just pointless. It went something like this:

“It’s not what I signed up for,”

“But Boof supports you, and lets you do things that you want to do, and it’s that whole sickness & health part of your vows”-FIL

“Yes, but it’s not what I signed up for. Yeah yeah, sickness and health. But when we met he was in school to be a pastor. I was going to be a pastor’s wife. And then he got a job as a teacher. I was a teacher’s wife. We went into the decision to have a kid based on the fact that he was a teacher. And then, when he resigned quietly after a false accusation about ‘inappropriate texting’ with his student (who, sidenote, he had permission from her mom to text about schoolwork and no inapprorpiate texts were actually found), I supported him through that, and HE got to stay at home and I haven’t liked having to borrow money from you all, and now I’m an accountant’s wife and it’s tax season and it’s NOT WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR!”

My imaginary argument with FIL ends about there, and I am driving and listening to the radio and feeling sorry for myself and annoyed that I keep whining. I don’t understand why I can’t be like my military wife friends, or my stay-at-home mommy friends who bear the burden of childraising all by themselves during the day  and night because their husbands are working/too-exhausted-at-the-end-of-the-day.

Sure I’ve gotten into a better rhythm with things, but I get annoyed that Boof comes to bed at 12:30 after watching hours of television, but forgot to get yogurt for Potamus’ breakfast and I have to go to the store so he’ll have food at daycare. When we were dating and we took a pre-marital questionaire for our pre-marital counseling, one of the things that we talked about was egalitarian parenting and relationship, since I had been accustomed to this idea that women should willingly raise children without a complaint. But he informed me otherwise of his beliefs, and I let myself believe in egalitarian relationships, and it felt good. But now it feels like I am in charge of both working hard, raising Potamus AND caring for the house and meal-planning. It’s a lot more than I signed up for and I’m struggling with that. I know that it will straighten out after tax season is over, but I’m not looking forward to every year being like this…especially since we’re thinking of possible expanding the family…

How do YOU deal with unmet or disappointed expectations?

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I taught my last lecture on Thursday, and this upcoming week will be filled with watching our students’ final presentations. Should be easy-peasy and then off for the month of December. Looking forward to that with much anticipation. I have play-dates (for both mama AND baby) lined up, a trip across the mountains for Christmas, and plenty of just chill moments with our little family before I go back, and in anticipation of Boof going back (at the end of January).

With all of this joy and happiness coming up, why do I feel so dark? The days are darker. My nights are even darker, though, hallelujah Potamus slept for 4 hours straight last night. My anxiety is high, too, mostly around this whole idea of sending Potamus to daycare 2 days a week. I am freaking out about the drive (which route to commute to cut down on time), and the transition, all of the things that can go wrong while he’s gone from me for 10 hours a day, and knowing that soon Boof will be back to work during the tax busy season and that means only seeing him on Sundays. Which means, me working full-time and parenting full-time, alone…

When I’m in this head-space I begin to freak out. FREAK out. Like eat 3 boxes of Trader Joe’s freak out. And try not to break things freak out. Trying to stop imagining Potamus languishing in a Romanian orphanage instead of the hand-picked daycare that we chose. Trying to remember that who he will be as a 12 month old, or a 13  month old, will be different than right now, and he will be able to handle things differently.

I have been trying the herbal homeopathic way of dealing with this clear depression/anxiety. The 5HTP and St. John’s Wort was working, and then I started to forget to take it and I had another bout of extreme irritability. I am worried that it means I’m going to have to go back in to the doctor and get prescribed anti-depressants. It’s not the medicine that I am worried about, because the meds I use are fabulous and wish I could just keep the prescription re-filled again and again..it’s my doctor. It’s not that she’s bad. She’s just a little…cold? She has really tiny limp cold hands and doesn’t seem very personal, though she’s nice and polite and asks all the right questions. Boof thinks I should change doctors, but I am too overwhelmed to think about forming a new relationship with someone.

And this has been the first day in over 10 that I’ve been able to even form words to describe all the nonsense going on inside me. Instead I’ve been glowering and stomping around and trying not to cry. Boof and I have had some good talks, but then I decompensate and am unable to communicate again. Like writer’s block, except it’s my life. I think that November, and writing about adoption every day, was really hard and triggering for me, and added to my depression. We’ll see if I decide to do that again, or modify it so that I don’t completely fall apart.

Reflections on 16 months of crisis counseling

I have witnessed a lot in the past 16 months of crisis counseling, and as I sit on my last day, having discharged my last client last night, I feel so much hope in my move forward. But there is also this lingering sense of  heaviness from all that I have witnessed…

I accepted the job, as a Crisis Intervention Specialist, working with youth 3-18 and their families in King County, 24 hours after I learned I was pregnant. So my first 9 months on the job I was pregnant and the 2nd half of the job I was a new mom. While I have been employed there for 16 months, if you take out the maternity leave in the middle, I’ve solidly worked there for 1 year. But 1 year feels like an eternity. There are things I have seen, and witnessed, and felt that are hard to put into words, hard to describe to people who haven’t been there.

Like, how do you explain the feeling of arriving at an apartment, to find a 250 lb naked teenage developmentally delayed (can’t speak or understand language)  girl from a foreign country sitting on the stairs and realizing that she is the client. Naked. And what goes through my mind is, “my schooling did not prepare me for this.” To be body slammed and try to explain to the family through an interpreter how the mental health system works here in America.

How do I explain the smell of a pre-adolescent who hasn’t showered or changed clothes for the past 3 months because she sees a bloody axe wielding woman in the bathtub. How do I explain the condemend house infested with fleas with the family living in the basement? Or the 13 year old who was pregnant and kicked out of her house by her aunt, who said it’d be fine if she just went to live in a shelter. Or the 5 year old who put his mom in a choke-hold while she drives down the freeway. Or the meth-coke-crack-oxy-marijuana-alcohol abusing 15 year old trying to stay sober in a family of addicts.

Or what about the 12 year old prostiting herself because she heard her birthmother did drugs and was on the street and she hoped that maybe she would meet her out there, somewhere, sometime.

I have seen so much, and yet, what I have seen doesn’t compare to how much my family’s have seen. And I am leaving this position changed, in a way that is hard to put into words. Not much scared me before, but now there is very little that I am really afraid of in reaction or relation to teens or their families.

 

assorted box of things stored in the attic of my mind

• Potamus crawled yesterday (8/28). He is 8 months and 1 week old and had been whining and trying to scoot for over a month and then suddenly, trying to reach a metal measuring cup, he did it. Inch by inch, with a chicken’wing type gait, he did it. And then he did it again. And then he performed on cue for the camera. And today he won’t stop…crawling after cords, and the dog’s bone, and anything that catches his goldfish like attention span.

• I haven’t gotten more than 2 hours of sleep in a row for at least a month..probably more. While Potamus has never been a good sleeper, the longest stretch ever being 5 hours (happened once), but he used to faithfully go 3 or 4 in the first part of the night and then slowly disintegrate to 2 or 45 minutes. Now he is sleeping for 2 at a time if I’m lucky. I might or might not be a basket case…or at least on the verge of basket case in the very near future.

• I have 2 interviews in the next week. One for my ultimate dream job, the other for my next-to-ultimate dream job. Good vibes for me, please!

• We’ve side-carred the crib and I keep thinking “hot damn, why didn’t we do this earlier?” While the arms-reach co-sleeper was great for storing things like my cell phone and stuffed animals, Potamus barely ever went down there without a fight…some nights he’d make it there until midnight, most it was until 10pm and then he’d end up in bed with us (something I am fine with, until baby feet end up in my ribs).
• Boof is dating accounting firms. I hope it lands in a sweet job, but I do enjoy having him around the house again.
• The drive over Snoqualmie Pass was beautiful, but sad because the leaves are already turning yellow. Is it fall already?
• My parents are coming into town tomorrow to watch Potamus while we deal with wedding festivities this weekend for Boof’s little sister. I hope it goes smoothly, but 4 adults, 1 baby and 3 dogs under our tiny roof is bound to put some pressure on an already stressed system.

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About a week ago I thought I was having a nervous breakdown. The stress at work had come to a head, the fears and worry about Boof starting classes in a week, the fact that Potamus has consistently REFUSED a bottle for the past 6 weeks (leaving me running all over the county on outreaches and then running back home again within 3-4 hours to nurse him…or having Boof drive around the county following me so that little mister can eat), the fact that I am maid of honor in my best friend’s wedding and am throwing her a bridal shower and bachelorette party…200 miles away, the fact that both of my sisters-in-law are getting married 2 months apart and we are in FULL wedding planning mode around here, the fact that laundry/dishes/yardwork/searching-for-new-job-work has all been pilingpilingpiling up in stacks on the table and in corners and my mind is crammedfullofsomuchstuffthaticanbarelybreathe.

Whew.

 

Who wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown with that kind of stress, really? So I started in on self-care, big time…writing group, sleeping as much as possible, eating healthy, trying to walk…crying. It’s amazing how freeing crying can be, and how I realize that I hold so much stuff in, trying to be the strong mama raising a strong child and bearing the brunt of the bread-winning at the same time.

But then there are these sweet break-in-the-clouds moments, where the sun pokes through and I react, once again, to my kiddos in crisis with the mantra “they are in crisis, i am not in crisis.” For a minute that statement wasn’t true, but for right now it is. I have driven almost 1,000 miles in my new little car and life is feeling back to a somewhat okay balance. Sure that could change tomorrow, but for right now I am learning that a little wobbly balance is okay. And that’s a lesson I’m learning from Potamus.

Today is day 2 of him sitting un-assisted. It’s amazing to think…he will never NOT know how to sit again (barring any major head trauma or amnesia). And today he grew in leaps and bounds, as I got to see him sit, and swivel, and reach forward, and catch his balance with wide-eyed-stare, and look so proud when he didn’t topple over. He’s learning. I’m learning. And it feels so sweet.

Road trip

Babies are clearly more flexible and resilient than their mamas. Boof and I took Potamus across the state this weekend to meet his great-grandma before she succumbs to Alzheimers completely. I was worried and stressed in the weeks leading up to the trip, as I actually love going places but actually hate the process of travelling…and with a breastfeeding baby I had no idea how long it would take or how I would adjust to sleeping with Potamus in a new place. I should realize that traveling is always worse in my mind and that we would be just fine if I could simply relax and enjoy myself. Potamus slept most of the trip and was a great sleeper at our friends house. We co-slept using a blanket in a coffee box from Costco to make our situation safer. Reminds me of my parents who used to have me sleep in a dresser drawer when they would visit relatives when I was a baby. Way easier than bringing a pack n play at this point!

Love and loathing

Love and loathing must be cut from the same cloth, they are so similar in intensity. I get caught up in the moment to moment of it all and when the pendulum swings to the dark-side, I wonder what the help am I doing in this situation? When did I want to be a mom, and now that I am here, the trapped scrambling-to-escape feelings come rushing back…predictably strong, like  stormy ocean waves. I am beginning to dread the darkness that falls so early in these winter evenings, as it means feeding on demand in the warm, dimly lit cave of a bedroom with Boof quietly sleeping next to me. The thoughts race again…night has never been my friend, and when I can escape the danger by sleeping I am a good person. And when I am awake, left to my own devices, the thoughts turn dark and scary. And thoughts influence action, and only 16 days into this new relationship, a relationship imbalanced by such brute strength and tiny innocence. He is completely dependent and I both love and resent it. How can I hold such dualities within me? Same how do I keep the shadow-self from hurting my sweet child?

Juggling Motherhood, Career and Personal Life

As sweet as it was to get Mother’s Day cards this year, I still don’t consider myself a mother…yet. So while I am in the process of becoming a mother, as little “chip-monk” grows (this is what Boof is now calling baby), I am still finding that it is difficult to juggle the balance between almost-motherhood, my career and having a personal life.

It doesn’t help that I started a new job 1 second after I learned about the pregnancy, or that the job is as a crisis-counselor. Granted, this stress is cognitively better than the stress that I was enduring at my last job, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that this is an easy process for me. And I wonder…at this point I am only balancing the theoretical idea of motherhood, and my career, and life…what will it be like when I am having to do it for real?