Hi all,
Sorry, very long post coming up, a lot is going on!
I had a pretty busy weekend. On Friday night our new neighbours came over for some food and drinks. And then on Saturday I drove my wife to Manchester and we went to a wedding reception.
At both events I seemed to become so preoccupied with what was going on, that I totally failed to think about my anxiety for about 2 hours...! I remembered it at each event, and thought; "wow, I haven't been thinking about it..."
This is major for me. The most awful thing about my anxiety has been that it is 24/7, like watching the world through a veil - the anxiety is always the first thought in my mind.
On Sunday the drive home was horrible, probably because I had been drinking 2 nights in a row, which I haven't done for a while. I think I was tensed up as it was a long drive and I had slept in a hard unfamiliar hotel bed. And now back at work on Monday morning I don't feel great - but I am determined to remember that there was some time on Friday and Saturday when I wasn't thinking about the anxiety - the first time this has happened in over four months.
The funny thing about it is - the times I wasn't thinking about the anxiety were exactly the times I would have been anxious in the past (before the GAD came on). They were social events with people I didn't know very well, which normally would have produced a fairly high level of "normal anxiety" and this time they didn't. I suppose I was concentrating hard on being OK with the situation I was in, rather than concentrating on anxiety. Because I was in a traditionally "anxious situation", I didn't have time to think about my "constant anxiety"... if you see what I mean.
I think the other thing that has happened is that things have moved on with my psychotherapist. In my last few sessions I have really come to terms with how much work I need to do in relation to a very horrible period of my childhood during which my parents split and my mother tried to kill herself, and I had to help her through nervous breakdowns and depression. I think that facing up to the fact that I have deeply seated emotional problems as a result of all this is helpful in a way. I can kind of relax into the work that needs to be done. I know it will be very hard for a while to come, but I would rather deal with real emotions than the disingenuous face of anxiety, which doesn't tell you anything about how you are really feeling.
Anyway, I am off to France tomorrow with my wife for 5 days and am feeling more confident about enjoying it than I was. I will relax, relax, relax.
And then I come back to a hard week, as my wife will be away in the USA for a week with work, and I am worried about her flying, and her being so far from home etc.
But these two contrasting weeks seem to sum up how life is, and how I need to just settle into life and "take things as they come". Life is contradictory, up and down, some great things, some terrible things. Somehow I would like to learn to just accept things as they are and roll with things. Hopefully the lessons of the anxiety will help me to do so.
be well,
Gareth
*** I think, therefore I'm anxious ***
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