my baby anxiety

For as long as I can remember, I have had anxiety.  And by that I mean literally for as long as I can remember.  My first memory was feeling anxious.  I was too young to have a vocabulary that included words like anxiety or nervousness or probably even fear so I called them "Bad Memories."

My mom has compared my anxiety to being like a big giant baby that I have to carry around and tend to my entire life.  And unlike a real baby, it doesn't make me smile in awe at the latest trick it's learned and it certainly never grows up, unless it's in the Baby Huey sense where it just becomes bigger and heavier and evermore clumsier.

Of course, the whining infant of my anxiety requires more and less attention from me at certain times in my life.  It ebbs and flows seemingly along with the tides and lunar phases, or at least with a change in my hormones.  The last two trimesters of both of my pregnancies were smooth sailing.  The first trimester of my first pregnancy turned me into a total mess of oozing emotions, someone who locked my classroom door during lunch and sat and sobbed at my desk.  The first few weeks after my children weaned from nursing were bad.  The stable patterns of hormonal cycles during my college years were both after the storms of teenage-hood and before the torrents of child bearing years.  I didn't suffer from anxiety quite as acutely. Middle school was bad.  Middle school was the worst.

I've determined, along with my family members and licensed medical professionals (read - I have not just self diagnosed as I often do), that I have a chemical imbalance that causes these intense feelings of distress and malaise.  I'm not just a "nervous nellie."  I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  And by that I don't mean, "Oh, I'm super neat and tidy.  I just have to have everything just so."  In fact, I'm quite the opposite.  I'm a messy person by nature and maintaining a clean home is a real struggle for me.  Just peer into the windows of my car for evidence.  The floors of my car are a wasteland that I have just given up on.

When I say I have anxiety, I don't just mean that I worry a bit.  To be sure, in the good times, that's exactly what it is.  It's a mild sense of jumpy nerves, almost more like a heightened awareness and compulsion to always be vigilant.

Check to see that the doors are locked, that the oven is turned off, that the stoves aren't burning.  Did I unplug my hair straightener?  Are my children up to date on their health care?  Is Dave secure in his job?  Have I accidentally hurt the feelings of someone I love?

This is a level of worry that I have learned to accept.  It's never going to fully disappear but at least the baby is down for it's nap.

But sometimes it's worse than that.  Sometimes it intensifies and I can't run or hide or get it to leave me alone.  The worst are the times when I struggle to separate my anxiety from what's real.  Imagine that my abilities of logic and reason are like a pair of glasses.  The anxiety and my disorder are the blurriness around the lens.  While many people are lucky enough to wear contact lenses, I'm stuck in glasses and even though I find clarity when I look straight ahead, I can always see the blur in my periphery.  When the fear settles in, however, it's like having the glasses knocked from my face and I'm forced to stumble along blindly through the haze of my self made terror.

Thankfully, I'm blessed enough to have a support team of people I love who, in my times of inadequate vision, describe the world to me in the clarity they're able to see.  For nearly thirty years, my mom has been my live in, always on call personal therapist.  Often she brings in her associate, my dad and seven years ago, Dave joined the practice.  These people I love and trust help me differentiate between anxiety and reality.

Yes, it is reasonable to make sure the doors are locked before you go to bed.  It is not necessary to keep getting up in the night to check and recheck.

A visit to the doctor for an annual flu vaccine is a great idea.  Prophylactic rabies vaccinations are not.

It's logical to have a healthy desire to protect your children.  Researching and ensuring that your children have appropriate and correctly installed car seats is an important thing to do.  Barricading the front door with heavy furniture in case your children learn to unlock the doors in the night is not a rational thing to do.

There are a variety of ways that I cope with this disorder.  The love and support and guidance of my family are an invaluable tool for calming the storms of my fear.  A few years ago, I started taking an anti-anxiety medication.  I know that this is not the answer for some but to me, it was as if I was in a prison of anxiety disorder and a doctor handed me the key to get out.  In my case, I believe that medication was an answer to prayers and it's evident when I forget to take it.

Unfortunately, one of my major methods of handling the stress of anxiety has been to self medicate with food.  When fear and panic settles in, which is more likely to happen late in the evening, I am compelled to turn to binge eating to soothe my pain.  More is better and I very quickly consume a very large amount of food, particularly foods that are high in sugar and simple carbohydrates.  Often, they aren't even tasting good to me.  At times I've found myself eating slice after slice of plain sandwich bread in order to dull the sharp sting of panic and anxiety.

It always works for a while.  It helps for the night but in the morning I'm awoken with guilt and heartburn and I'm even farther from my health goals which only exacerbates my problem.  Usually, when I wake up the next morning, the effects of my self destructive medication have worn off and my baby anxiety is once again wailing loudly into my brain.  It's become a vicious cycle and I'm desperately fighting to break it.  This is what I meant when I said weight loss is about so much more than simply eating less and exercising more.

This is going to be the fight of my life but I'm still going strong.  I'm looking for new ways to ease the anxiety.  I'm finding that something as simple as a good hobby I enjoy can help for a while to occupy my mind.  In the past, playing piano has really allowed me to disconnect from the fear for a while.  I've thrown myself into my work and have taken on more jobs to keep me busy.  I know that exercise is sure to help.  A portion of the solution may be to adjust my medication to fill the gap that binge eating has left behind.  I'm turning to the Savior for help shouldering this burden.  Of all the things I've mentioned, I know that this will help.  He's carried me before.

This was kind of hard for me to write.  Well, I should clarify.  This wasn't hard to write.  The words came tumbling from by brain down to my fingers and on to the screen at an alarming rate.  I have a lot to say and am definitely not at a loss for words when it comes to this topic.  What I mean to say is that this was hard to post.  It's not easy to share these feelings that so often come across as crazy.  But I'm tired of skirting around the elephant in the room by saying, "This is so hard," but not really talking about why.  So there it is and now I'm not sure how to end this post.

So I guess I'll just end with a weight loss update.  Despite these challenges, I'm still going strong and limping along what feels like the beginning of a life long marathon.  It's getting harder but I'm just not ready to give in this time.

 Starting Weight: 281.5

Current Weight: 267

Total Lost: 14.5 pounds

I spent the afternoon at the doctor's office because, you know, a swollen tonsil is sure to be cancer.

Obviously, I did not have tonsil cancer. Waste of a $25 copay you say? Maybe but at least I got a flu shot out of it.