Car Anxiety Resolved! (For Today Anyway)
I am not going to lie; I have been having a rough go around. It is a hard thing to reprogram your mind. It is a hard thing to think that you can just snap out of feeling depressed. It is not that easy. I have major highs and when I am low, they can be intensely low. I have not felt like this in quite a while so it is making it much worse to have familiar/unfamiliar feelings. I am feeling a shift taking place. However, I am so fatigued and mentally exhausted that it feels like I will never be the same again.
These are only feelings though.
The shift that I am finding so difficult is changing my thinking about feelings. I have always been influenced into thinking that if you are feeling depressed, anxious, not the life of the party, etc… Then those are all bad and they need to be turned into happy, jolly, ecstatic, whatever. Happy = Good and acceptance. Sad = Bad and not accepted. (Sad has all of the perceived negative emotions generalized into it, just to give clarity of definition there.) To sit here feeling depressive types of emotions and not condemn myself for it feels foreign. It is a battle that I happen to be winning, so that is good.
It is lonely.
Most people do not want to hang around a person who is not the happy-go-lucky-ball-of-sunshine-bursting-out-yellow-smiley faces all the time. I have realized that is ok too. Sometimes people need that, sometimes people need dark-sad-dreary-droopy dog days too. They are only emotions and feelings and the brain communicating things, for me it happens to be that I have not had any alone time and I am exhausted. Let me clarify, I have been unable to do anything after the kids are in bed other than sit and stare at the TV. I hate that unless it is something that I want to watch, but I do not want to watch anything, really. I had to stop reading my book because it was feeding into my sadness. I find that difficult to accept, these down emotions and my anxiety, because they can be so consuming and painful. I just want them to hurry up and go away, but I tend to do the very opposite of what I need to do in order to find the balance in my brain.
I seem to gravitate toward damaging triggers as if to feed the pain, anxiety, and confusion.
I also tend to forget every single time that I do this. :-/ For instance, when I hid my phone the other day I caused myself even more anxiety by not listening to my messages. I created scenarios that were not real and played fabricated messages in my head. When my mind started saying things like, “My aunt is angry at me. She never wants to talk to me again. She is ignoring me on facebook.” (I think I need to block myself from facebook on many days. It is such a trigger for me and I fall into it every time.) I ran to my phone and called her. I was almost in a full-blown panic attack when I called her. I was breathing heavily and managed to get the words out about my anxiety.
I told her, “I am calling you because I having anxiety and thinking that you are angry with me.”
She started laughing and said, “Oh, you would know if I was angry with you!” I know this very well. If she is upset, she does not ignore a person. She does not play mind games. She flat out tells the person what she is thinking and feeling. This is what I adore about her. It is also how I knew that I was making it all up. After talking to her for a while, and her telling me that I am going to have to get some thicker skin with the family, I felt much better. It is a lot for me to process with my family. It is going to take time and I need to take baby steps. (What About Bob, love!) I need to accept that and stop putting so much pressure on myself.
I have done several things differently this time.
I have managed to take hold of my negative looping. I have been able to allow my emotions be emotions, and I took control of my anxiety by calling my aunt. Big steps. I did not sink, hide, and keep myself cut off from the world. (very long) Although, I confess that I am kind of rolling my eyes at myself and feeling a little foolish for still having these issues. For some reason I feel like I should be over all of this by now. I attack myself with thoughts of how this is so ridiculous. I think that is the wrong way to look at it – I do not condemn others who have similar reoccurring issues as myself. I do not judge them or think that they should be “over it” by now.
Why do I do that to myself?
I definitely do not do that to Daniel, Ariel, or Joshua. I tend to give a lot of leniency to kids and other people. I need to work on that with myself. I was sidetracked – can you tell? My initial post was going to be short and about today. I am assuming that I needed to write all of that out. I am finished for the moment. Here is what I wanted to share. I felt like I needed to get away from my computer today. I felt that I needed to spend more time with the kids. I also felt that I needed to get out of the house. I cannot stand feeling trapped in the house.
I asked Daniel if he would like to go see the river today.
He said, “No.” I told him that we really should try to go and asked him if he would like to go see the library too – there is one right next to the river area that we were going to. He asked, “Why do we need to go there?” I told him that we would get his yogurt on the way back because he was out of yogurt. He said, “I don’t want to.” Then, he curled up on the floor and the blood rushed out of his face. I picked him up, put him in my lap, and reminded him of how we went to the comic book store the other day and he had fun.
He asked if I would sit in the back with him.
I told him that I could not because I had to drive, but that I would move Joshua in the back to sit next to him. After a few more minutes of reminding him that he did not get sick, and that everything went really well the last time in the car, he finally agreed. He had no problems getting into his car seat, and he did not feel sick at all. We drove to a few different places and he did great. He is still anxious, and will be for a while. However, now I have these positive experiences to remind him of. He was very happy and had a great time – all of us did.
I was so happy to see my good friend the river again.
I love the water no matter how murky or smelly it may be. The river was a faithful companion of mine as a child and I will never forget that. The sun gleaming on the ripples, are pure grand delight. I tried to teach the kids how to skip rocks, but we could not find any flat ones. Instead, they tried to throw rocks across the river to the other state… over yonder.
The library is a smaller one.
It is bigger than the one where we used to live and much nicer. Definitely, more quiet and no flickering fluorescent lights that make us all dizzy and confused. We had fun there; I will be taking them to the much larger one in the next few weeks. We even went to the store and all went very well. Ariel, Joshua, and me played a new game called Quiddler Deluxe. I didn’t mean too, but I ended up winning the whole thing because I got cards that spelled QUARK! Lol! Awesome! Joshua was not at all pleased, Ariel looked rather shocked by the whole event. She was winning before that happened. Oops! It has been a great day, even though I am feeling sickly and very tired.
I am off here are some pictures!
There is a picture in here of Joshua with his pants full of stuffed animals. The story behind it, he wants pants like Flea’s stuffed animal pants from Red Hot Chili Peppers. Lol! He told me that he had to do that because he does not have the pins to put them on his pants. Ariel and Daniel want a pair now. 
