Archive for anxiety

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Posted in anxiety, dealing with ex's, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, stress with tags , on November 12, 2014 by sexandthesinglesoccermom

In the past, I’ve blogged numerous times about D, the ex who broke my heart multiple times and over whom I spiraled into a terrible depression. It’s been two years since our last encounter and it’s really only within the last year that I’ve started to feel at peace. By peace I mean that I no longer go into panic attacks when I come within a 5 mile radius of his house. I don’t weep over what happened or wonder what’s wrong with me that allowed him to treat me the way he did.

He is still the only relationship where I’d love to pull an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and eradicate any trace of him from my memories. It’s the only relationship where even time and distance hasn’t create a sense of bittersweet acceptance. The deep pain and anger I experienced over the course of knowing him negated any happy memories. No other relationship has such a lasting negativity for me. With time, the lens through which I see how things happened and choices he made has become even more clear; the clarity doesn’t soften the experience in a positive way or make me feel more kindly toward him.

Is that perhaps why the Universe is taunting me by throwing him into my path? Despite blocking him and his girlfriend on social media so that I would hopefully NEVER have to hear anything about either of them, I’ve had several pictures of them drop into my newsfeed because of mutual acquaintances. Now, it appears they’re going to invade my professional life as well. Should specific decisions be made, I’d have to deal with one of them on a near daily basis. I’m in a unique position professionally of having most of the people I deal with be part of my personal community as well, so they would be invading my world.

All I want is for them to stay as far away from me as is humanly possible so that I can continue on my path of healing and peace. Why the FUCK does that not seem to be an option?

I’m struggling a lot with this possibility and trying to breathe through the stress. I have enough on my plate without allowing this man, who took up space in my mind and heart far longer than he deserved, to bring me more grief and worry. I will face whatever comes and try to find the lesson and growth opportunity in it. That’s my goal for tomorrow. Today, I’m just really, really angry and stressed out and wanting to stomp my feet that I have to deal with this at all.

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Feeling My Feelings

Posted in anxiety, Dating, depression, self-improvement with tags , , , , on October 2, 2013 by sexandthesinglesoccermom

Last week I asked my therapist if it was possible to die from anxiety.

“No, not really.” He replied in an infuriatingly calm voice.

“But my chest hurts like I’m having a heart attack and it’s been going on for days!”

“I’m sure that feels really bad, but it would basically take years and years for it to kill you.”

This week, still in the middle of what feels like the world’s longest anxiety attack and a complete, sobbing mess, I basically ask for drugs.

“I need something to make me feel better RIGHT NOW!” I tell him between sobbing fits.

He tells me I need to feel my feelings. In protest, I ask him what the hell he thinks I’m doing? All I’m doing is feeling my feelings, that’s the problem! He insists that I’m so busy thinking about my feelings and trying to distract myself from them so I can continue functioning, I’m not really allowing myself to feel and identify them. He makes the asinine suggestion of taking the next two days off from work, a suggestion I immediately reject because…well…I just can’t…even though the thought of having space and time to grieve is certainly appealing to me. He tells me to use my weekend without my children to let myself sit with any feelings that come up and just feel them, without rejection or judgement.

I immediately am able to clearly identify the feeling of wanting to throttle him with my bare hands until he gives me a pill…a practice…a solution, anything that will ease this tightness in my chest and sick knot in my stomach. Anything that will make me feel better, quickly. Because getting into the hell hole bubble of grief and fear and anger that keeps surfacing sounds really, really bad and like a monstrously unappealing and scary idea.

Still, I went into this weekend prepared to try to dive headfirst into this darkest before the dawn sort of thing; feel bad so I can have hope of feeling better. I vow to myself to A.) Not drink, because I know that I drink to mute my feelings, even though I rarely get drunk; It’s still a way of escaping. B.) Let myself feel whatever comes up and try to identify what it is and trace it back to the source. Is it anger? If so, what am I angry at? Is it grief? What am I grieving?

Over the weekend, I went and met face-to-face with my lover…well, ex-lover. Perhaps that’s a future blog. Suffice it to say, for now, it gave me a lot of feelings I could work on.

The weekend was unpleasant. I cried a lot. I realized the extent of the emptiness and depression I often feel and how much my lover lifted me out of it and gave me something to look forward to; I saw how much this wave of emotion is related to not wanting to sink back into that place. I felt anger and frustration and fear and sadness. And deep down, I feel hopeless because I don’t know how to mitigate it. I can recognize relying on a partner (or the hope of a partner) to change my life is absolutely setting myself up for failure. Because if I do and things fall apart, it thrusts me right back into crisis and self-doubt. Yet I don’t know what to do differently, because I feel like I’ve tried everything. Getting “out there”, being social, starting hobbies, taking up projects, throwing myself into parenting, studying, meditating, yoga, exercise…it all feels like I’m pouring water into a jug with a bunch of holes at the bottom. At the end I’m left feeling empty…lonely…bleak. How do I change that without relying on a partner that may or may not show up, or may or may not stick around? I also realized how often when I’ve expressed sadness or anger I’ve been told all the reasons I shouldn’t feel those emotions, rather than receiving validation or even simple acceptance. Being told “feel different” is hardly a valid solution to any negative emotion; I’ve gotten the message loud and clear that what I feel is wrong, therefore who I am must be wrong. Feeling my feelings seems scary; there are all these voices in my head saying “stop being ungrateful, selfish, whiney, self-pitying, a drama queen, unenlightened, angry, a bitch, unreasonable, too sensitive…”. The list goes on and on.

So I have lots of questions, with no answers, drugs are still sounding like an appealing option and I don’t feel tremendously better. I’m calmer. I’m a week and a half past the end of things with my lover and the anxiety is still present, but I don’t feel it every single moment of the day at least. Is that progress? Or just a sink back into the emptiness?

My goal was to use this year before I turn 40 to get answers, but all I feel is the clock ticking and not really closer to knowing how to truly be happy. So…come on, Universe! Send me some light! I’d like to kind of start to figure this life thing out sometime soon…

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