Month: March 2014

Changes

As everyone knows, but might not like, the fact is that life seems to constantly be changing.  People come and go, they die, babies are born, jobs change, there are promotions, then there are marriages, divorces, even change of mind and so much more.  I know when my panic/anxiety and agoraphobia where at their worst change was something I did not deal well with.  To try to deal with changes I would just visit my old friend denial again and make believe that things were just the same-that worked for me….or maybe not.  I fooled myself for as long as possible, I found that creating my own little world inside my house made it a little easier to cope.  That doesn’t mean I wasn’t confronted with changes, I was, but I put them into my own context.  When that didn’t work I just buried whatever changes there were, hoping never to see them again.  But then therapy came along and suddenly my previously denied and buried changes were on public display.  

I find that I have become better about handling change, at least most of the time.  But there are some times when it seems like there are more changes than I can deal with.  I feel like I have been knee deep in way too many changes lately and I am overwhelmed.   I have someone I am very close with that lives a distance away and is now moving further away.  I have had some deaths, changes in my life style, health changes, changes in the way I access medical care, changes with my son, and I am sure there are more that I am forgetting.  I think it would help if I had some sort of chart to keep it all straight.  I have decisions to make that could lead to more changes in our life.   I am trying hard to use the tools I have learned in therapy to keep it all in perspective, you’ll notice I said trying.

 

 

Life can be so……..overwhelming

There have been times when I felt overwhelmed by my anxiety.  But for some time now that’s been better, or at least manageable.  Lately it seems that life is what tends to be overwhelming.  It’s not any one thing in particular, actually most of the time it is simply the accumulation of things that is overwhelming to the point that I just want to run.  Running is the way I cope (or not cope) when I am overwhelmed.

About a month ago I was so stressed about several things; like money, health issues, house issues, money, my son, legal issues and oh yeah money.  I started feeling like I couldn’t breath and like I was having palpitations.  I tried to reduce some of my stress (if only that was simple) but it didn’t seem to help.  But, as always with me I just kept going.  Then I started having chest pains, so I decided that perhaps I needed to go to the emergency room-so I did.  They did some tests, consulted with a cardioligist, did some more test and I learned what a code 10 is (chest pains).  But after all that there were no conclusive answers.  So, since then I have had more tests-a cardiac CT, echocardiogram, another EKG and I have seen the cardioligist, who has ordered another test, an Adenosine test.

Through all this the one thing I have not had is anxiety, but I’m not sure I have the energy to be anxious.  All this would seem enough to deal with…but no.  We recently had a large rain storm here in California and I had flooding in my garage.  So I have been moving things that were in the water.  I had an interesting experience, I was moving extra floor tiles out to dry and I was short of breath, having palpitations and was a little dizzy-so I learned that if you stay bent over it is easier to deal with the dizziness, or you are just closer to the ground.  Now, I don’t recommend that anyone try that, but for today it got me through and sometimes that just has to be enough.