The Weight of the World Part II

It's a little ironic, in a way, that the very thing you carry around with you everyday could also be the cure, weight!  Of course I am talking about two different kinds of weight.  The weight I have carried for quite sometime is worry and anxiety.  The other weight that I am talking about is heavy weight.  You would think that someone with anxiety, no matter how minor or severe, would feel claustrophobic, or more anxious by laying under a weighted blanket.  Well that was my first thought when I considered trying it.

I know what it's like to wake up and feel so weighted down and nervous to even start the day.  I know what it's like to wake up during the night or never go to sleep due to irregular breathing, pulsing in my head, and even palpitations.  I know what its like to play head games with myself to get the courage to walk into the doctors office and then once I'm there I look like some crazy lady in the corner taking deep breaths, sniffing in the scent of my essential oils, and putting myself into hypnosis to find some peace.  I know what it's like to want to control all of it , but at times I can't.  Truthfully, I don't consider my anxiety very severe.  Sometimes a much needed vacation will do the trick, or quiet time with a book or a favorite TV show.  Sometimes a hot shower can calm me down too.

As a kid, I was pretty anxious, often times I would get so upset that it would drive my head straight into the toilet as my insides forced their way out of me.  I remember the infamous bathroom talks with my  mom where she would try to calm down the degree of my tantrum as my two older siblings stood outside the bathroom door wondering if she was going to kill me this time!  "Don't you dare throw up!"  She would say, ha, I have found, a few times, myself regurgitating my mother while doing the same calming routine with my daughter!  I have talked about payback, right? yep! Haha!  Whenever I was chastised or did something wrong, I was embarrassed, and sometimes it caused great anxiety to the point of physical reaction or sickness.  Most of what I thought I had grown out of has come back to haunt me sometimes and unfortunately the anxiety still thrives in the right conditions.

For some reason over the last 4 years of my life something very stressful has happened in the new year months of January or February.  It seems to have taken trend in my life and I think in part those months have made me a little anxious.  Hopefully the trend will not continue for 2020.  Last February I developed some anxiety, not because something bad came up, but because of the trend that had been taking place in my life.  I was really stressed for no apparent reason.  I developed a terrible migraine with aura on Valentine's Day, and of course it was during my 70 hour work week as well.  I became completely useless in a matter of 15-20 minutes with the usual signs, loosing eye sight, lightheaded, dizzy, the worst pounding pain in my head.  Sometimes these migraines are mistaken for strokes because they can actually cause temporary paralysis.  I have lost feeling in my left arm before, it is terrible.  I don't get these migraines often, but I had experienced 2 within 6 months of each other, which was a little more frequent than before.  Of course I hopped on the worry wagon and started driving like a mad woman.  I do worry about my head a little since my Dad had a pituitary brain tumor years ago.  Pituitary tumors are usually more common in women and can be genetic.  I had a CAT scan when I was quite young, but started to consider having another one.  This anxiety robbed me of many nights of sleep and even energy during the day.  I went to my doctor at the encouragement of family and friends.  Well going to the doctor was no easy feat for me either.  When it comes to anxiety, something that seems so menial and insignificant to most can become a mountain for someone experiencing the pangs of anxiety.  I did not sleep a wink the night before, my blood pressure was high and I felt faint sitting there waiting.

I don't have a problem with doctors if I feel like they really care and are on my side and will sincerely listen to me.  I have had such bad experience with many that have made me feel like I have to give up something to be treated, or have treated me with disrespect.  I often times view them as someone that wants to overpower me or control and violate me in some way.  Not only, that, but I also have fear of misdiagnoses, or medications that may be harmful to me.  Because of all of this I am more prone to turning to alternative options and I have responded well to many of those.  Well, when I visited my current doctor he just listened and we had a good discussion about stress and how to manage it.  It was good, it helped, but not totally.  I have thought about counseling and talking therapy which I think could either help...... or destroy me!  Being an introvert sometimes it is hard for me to talk to people I don't know that well and even people I do know.  If I feel the least bit mistreated by a doctor, I develop this anxiety.  It's strange because with most people I am not like that and I don't view myself as a person that would be that sensitive, but with my past, I guess it makes sense.   Like I said before, I wish I could control it, I wish I could flip a switch and it would go away.  I felt loads and loads better after the doctor visit, but I still had a little trouble sleeping.  I was on social media one day when I saw the weighted blanket.  My first thought was "I think that might make me feel claustrophobic".  Well I did a little research and was convinced to try it.

The first night I slept with the extra weight on my body, it forced me to relax in a way I had never really felt before, it was comforting.  Well it was kind of like hypnosis, but the physical pressure provided almost instant results.  In the morning it was almost like I was a new person!  I had also been praying for a way to deal with my anxiety better.  That day I felt so inclined to share on social media my gratitude for life and without even thinking I announced I would start a blog and it would be called Empowering Daughters of God.  This had never been a premeditated idea.  I had never thought about the name either.  It just flowed out of me like water down a waterfall and it has been flowing with strong current ever since.  The weighted blanket is my new best friend.  The weighted blanket helped me realize that my bottled up thoughts were just another weighted blanket, but with the opposite effect! There is something so incredibly relieving about emptying my head.  I used to be good at keeping a journal, but haven't been good about it in years.  After I started this blog I realized how much I was keeping bottled up inside me.  Thoughts from my long past, thoughts from recent past, thoughts from the day just piling up and occupying the many crevices of my mind like the many memory balls that stack up in Riley's mind in the movie Inside Out. In that movie though, they are dumped into a wasteland and eventually forgotten, except I feel like that doesn't happen to me, I feel like I remember everything.  I am buried by my own thoughts and words!  Whether people read it or not, writing this blog has lifted a weight, the weight of the many words and thoughts that pass everyday through my mind.  It has brought me peace, comfort, a sense of accomplishment, a sense of gratitude, a sense of self acceptance and has cut free the cords that have held me bound for so many years!   

These past 7 years I have felt like a deconstructed version of myself.  I have felt like the puzzle that is my life has been deconstructed and scattered.  With every blog that I have released I have found a piece of myself.  I have started to feel whole again.  I never imagined that the memories, thoughts, and words that have been a burden would be the very thing that would piece me back together so that I can have peace!

In my case, my anxiety has a great deal to do with how I think, what I think, and even when I think.  So, this is my talking therapy.  I don't know if my strange phobia of doctors will ever cease, or any of my other worries, but this has been a great way to help me cope with it, and provide a little more control.
Don't keep it bottled up!
So.............................