![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
For better and for worse
Jan. 22nd, 2018 10:22 amIt's been a slightly weird week.
I posted last Monday about my experience working on actively letting go of anxiety, and how surprised I was at my success - not just in the moment, as most such effects are, but throughout the evening. I'm pleased (if also slightly puzzled) to report that the effects have continued through the week. That's not to say I haven't experienced unpleasant emotions (more on that in a moment), but that background mental hum - the one that sometimes fades and sometimes grows louder, but that I always know can turn into an anxiety episode if I'm not careful to manage it - is just...gone. It's weird, like when the power goes out and you suddenly realize there are computer fans and a fridge and a HVAC system and all these sources of white noise that you've learned to ignore, and without them everything suddenly feels...quiet.
The especially weird part is, in some ways this past week (and especially the last few days) has been tailor made to trigger my anxiety. My calendar was booked close to solid - I even saw a client on a day I'd planned to take off because she was only in town and available that afternoon. Late Friday/early Saturday Brian and I had our bikes stolen right off our back porch - and given that it's a second-floor porch right off of our bedroom, that's a pretty anxiety-inducing trespass. And today I was supposed to be teaching three classes at Sauganash, but last night I had some kind of random gastric distress that may or may not have been blood sugar related, but is definitely the kind of unexplained body issue that normally causes me acute anxiety (both due to the unknown nature of it and the adrenaline waking me up to use the bathroom every hour); also I had to send out a flurry of texts this morning looking for last-minute subs for my classes today, which is always stress-inducing.
And don't get me wrong, I am certainly unhappy with all of these things. (I may even have expressed myself in particularly unladylike language about both the bikes and the missed work.) But, while I have been annoyed and frustrated, I haven't had that hamster-wheel feeling of being trapped in an anxiety spiral, or even the sense that the anxiety's hovering in the background waiting for an unwary moment, that I might've had not long ago. And, unsurprisingly, that's made everything much easier to deal with, both because I've had the extra cycles to do so, and because it's much easier to keep things in perspective. (For those who're concerned: we have renter's insurance that should cover most of the replacement cost for the bikes, the worst of the distress seems to be over although I'm still very short on both energy and sleep, and I was able to get emergency subs for my classes today without too much trouble.)
Some part of me wonders how long this is going to last - much as I'd like to think it's a permanent shift, I strongly suspect the background hum will creep up on me again at some point. Maybe I should start meditating regularly and see if that helps? I will have to consider further...after sleep, I think.
I posted last Monday about my experience working on actively letting go of anxiety, and how surprised I was at my success - not just in the moment, as most such effects are, but throughout the evening. I'm pleased (if also slightly puzzled) to report that the effects have continued through the week. That's not to say I haven't experienced unpleasant emotions (more on that in a moment), but that background mental hum - the one that sometimes fades and sometimes grows louder, but that I always know can turn into an anxiety episode if I'm not careful to manage it - is just...gone. It's weird, like when the power goes out and you suddenly realize there are computer fans and a fridge and a HVAC system and all these sources of white noise that you've learned to ignore, and without them everything suddenly feels...quiet.
The especially weird part is, in some ways this past week (and especially the last few days) has been tailor made to trigger my anxiety. My calendar was booked close to solid - I even saw a client on a day I'd planned to take off because she was only in town and available that afternoon. Late Friday/early Saturday Brian and I had our bikes stolen right off our back porch - and given that it's a second-floor porch right off of our bedroom, that's a pretty anxiety-inducing trespass. And today I was supposed to be teaching three classes at Sauganash, but last night I had some kind of random gastric distress that may or may not have been blood sugar related, but is definitely the kind of unexplained body issue that normally causes me acute anxiety (both due to the unknown nature of it and the adrenaline waking me up to use the bathroom every hour); also I had to send out a flurry of texts this morning looking for last-minute subs for my classes today, which is always stress-inducing.
And don't get me wrong, I am certainly unhappy with all of these things. (I may even have expressed myself in particularly unladylike language about both the bikes and the missed work.) But, while I have been annoyed and frustrated, I haven't had that hamster-wheel feeling of being trapped in an anxiety spiral, or even the sense that the anxiety's hovering in the background waiting for an unwary moment, that I might've had not long ago. And, unsurprisingly, that's made everything much easier to deal with, both because I've had the extra cycles to do so, and because it's much easier to keep things in perspective. (For those who're concerned: we have renter's insurance that should cover most of the replacement cost for the bikes, the worst of the distress seems to be over although I'm still very short on both energy and sleep, and I was able to get emergency subs for my classes today without too much trouble.)
Some part of me wonders how long this is going to last - much as I'd like to think it's a permanent shift, I strongly suspect the background hum will creep up on me again at some point. Maybe I should start meditating regularly and see if that helps? I will have to consider further...after sleep, I think.
