Anxiety over hot chocolate

“Take a shower, wash off the day. Drink a glass of water. Make the room dark. Lie down and close your eyes. Notice the silence. Notice your heart beating. Still beating. Still fighting. You made it after all. You made it another day. And you can make it one more. You’re doing just fine.”

Do you ever have one of those days when your mind is so full, that your thoughts seem too loud and you kind of get a headache because it feels like there’s too much in your skull and suddenly there’s too much pressure?

Do you remember the last time you felt so flustered that you had an arm's length of things to do and you just don’t know where to begin?

Do you hate it when people say “just start from the beginning” because quite frankly if you knew where to start you probably wouldn’t be in the state you’re in?

That feeling you get when you're cold and hot at the same time, your arms are clammy and when you close your eyes you see colours because of just how loud your internal monologue is playing. When you can’t separate your thoughts because they all want to be heard but none of them wants to wait. Sometimes you can get so overwhelmed that laying in darkness by yourself seems to be the only cure but really it doesn’t help at all. The more someone tries to help, the more you realise how irrational you’re being and the more irrational you’re being the harder you find it to breathe and suddenly you feel like the whole world is watching you and maybe sometimes someone tells you you’re being dramatic so you try to downplay it to the point where you think you’re going to pass out because you realise you’ve been holding your breath for a little too long.

And breathe.

Yes, that’s called an anxiety attack and sometimes I can suffer from one of these a couple of times a week. 

I think everyone suffers from anxiety of varying levels. It’s actually quite natural to be anxious, what’s not is when it becomes the very thing that stops you living your life. Back when I didn’t really know what anxiety was, people would accuse me of being moody or difficult. Because I didn’t know any better, I would often agree. Because I would agree, I never took the time to learn what anxiety was and how it affected me in the ways I didn’t know about. When we don’t understand something, we fear it and often label it as the most logical thing we can think of.

Sure some people just hate massive gatherings, but some people also suffer from social anxiety. Anxiety doesn’t always have to be a negative thing, it can stop us from being reckless and getting hurt, but it’s when we allow it to consume our lives that we can actually hurt ourselves the most.

It took many years for me to get a handle on my anxiety, and sometimes even now, I struggle to rationalise some of my thoughts. But many years on I would say I understand, embrace and can manage my anxiety far better than before.

Self-soothing was my one and only trick. It’s such a funny term “self-soothing” I never really knew what it was until my friends started having kids and would talk about how little Eva was learning to self soothe. We see it as something only little kids need to learn to do, but in actuality, if more of us used it for our “adult problems” then we’d probably have a better handle of our internal struggles.

Self-soothing for me is trying to learn how to calm myself in order to prevent or minimise my spiralling. It’s also learning what triggers your anxiety and either finding ways to overcome it or to reduce surrounding yourself with the triggers.

For example, I find that when I’m feeling particularly ill, both mentally and physically, I tend to avoid busy places because it can trigger anxiety attacks pretty quickly. I get totally paranoid, really uncomfortable and I either burst into tears or completely freeze like a statue, I can’t even begin to explain what goes on in my head. It’s quite an awful feeling and after going through it quite a few times, I know now where my boundaries and limits are.

Part of my journey to learning to understand my anxiety is figuring out different ways to self soothe. Sometimes it isn’t so easy though, and that’s when having a great support system comes in handy.

During a particularly low time in my life, I suffered a series of bad days which culminated in a bad month. My mood was low and I was all over the place. I found myself hiding out in the safety of my bedroom. Laid in the darkness, squeezing my eyes tight, I tried to shut my mind down. All I could see were bright and blinding colours. The noise inside my head was so loud I was getting a migraine. I wanted nothing more than a moment of peace, but the thumping inside my head wouldn’t stop.

Scott came home from work. He called out for me but I didn’t answer. Eventually, he came into the bedroom, he didn’t even have to turn on the light to know I was there. He didn’t say anything. He just took off his coat and laid beside me. He stroked my hair, and silently we lay for a few minutes, then he spoke.

“Would you like to talk about it?” He asked softly. I shook my head. I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I felt ashamed that yet again, he was coming home to me completely broken, and once again I had no reason for it.

Eventually, when I spoke I admitted that I felt paralysed by the thoughts in my head. He asked me to try to piece out my thoughts, to say any random thought in my head so we could discuss it. But I just couldn’t, it was too cluttered and messy and I just didn’t know where to begin. I began to cry. I just felt so hopeless, helpless, I felt so ashamed.

I’m thankful he didn’t ask me why I was so sad. I’m thankful he reminded me that it’s okay not to have a reason for everything. I’m so thankful that he took the time to just lay in the darkness with me.

That feeling of support lifted the heaviness off of my chest. I did actually start to feel better. Why? Well, I guess it had to do with the fact that I felt like, I didn’t have to come up with an answer, that Scott would help me come up with an answer when I was ready.

I told him how foggy my mind felt and yet it was cluttered at the same time. He suggested we go downstairs and do a menial task to clear my mind. He suggested that I try to do something that didn’t require too much thinking in hopes that by doing that it would give me some kind of clarity. And you know what? The act of pouring milk into a mug, then the hot chocolate, then putting it in the microwave, stirring, putting the cream and then the marshmallows in, for a few simple minutes, my mind began to clear, and I was able to separate my thoughts from each other and group them into more manageable thoughts.

When we finally sat down at the dinner table, with our popcorn in little ramekin pots, he waited patiently till I began to speak.

We sat there for an hour talking about the little worries that piled up, like my fear of having the house fall into crazy untidiness if my depression slipped one way, to the bigger things that kept me awake like my the health of a sick relative, and my fear of failing at work. We talked about it all, he sat, he listened, he gave me advice and reassured me that big or small, my problems would be solved one small step at a time, and that we were a team.

A team.

That’s what eventually soothed my jumbled mind. The thought that I didn’t have to go through this alone, that I didn’t have to figure it all out myself because two heads were better than one.

After hours of laying in the darkness alone, I was able to calm my anxiety by learning to trust in someone else, not just rely on myself to be a problem solver of everyone's life difficulties. 

Because that’s just it, we all have people who love and care for us. None of us has to go through this alone. Our support group may not suffer from debilitating anxiety, they may not fully understand what you’re going through, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to try to be the support system that you need. Sometimes it’s okay to need help because we can’t come up with all of the answers alone. Remember that a problem shared is a problem halved. Sure you can still be independent and self-sufficient, even if on the occasion, you lean on someone else for support, in fact, I encourage it. Because you never know when that person might just need you too. And isn’t this world a much nicer place, when we all help each other out?

Do something to make your parents proud today, your kids proud someday and you proud every day!

Peace and love,

Jessy