There’s So Much in My Head

I’m at a spot in my life where I have so much going on in my head and heart that I’m terrified to look inside. The thought of sitting down to reflect on my own, in a blog post or with my trusted therapist scare me. I know if I open the box, I can’t close it.

I feel that if I dive into what is troubling me, I’ll cry and never be able to stop. So instead I keep pushing it down, sweeping it under the rug. Right now the pile under this imaginary rug is the size of both of my cats.

I can’t bare to face reality or the truth I keep tucked away in my heart. It’s much too painful for me to come to terms with.

I want to talk to my therapist about it but I don’t have the strength. Every day I consider making an appointment but I can’t. This is the first time that i am having trouble opening up to my therapist. She has seen me at my worst, seen me cry countless times.

But what’s making me sad, I can’t speak it. Because if I say it that makes it real, it makes it true.

I’m not ready for the truth. I just want to live in my comfort zone for a while longer. I’m not ready to give it up.

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Anxiety Emergency Kit

This coming week I might be returning to the office for one or two days. I don’t want to go but I know the longer I put this off, the more difficult the transition will be. To help with my transition, I am going to create my own anxiety emergency kit for my mental health.

Essential oils and diffuser – Nobody wants to sit in a musty basement and breathe in all the smells of a basement. To be fair, this basement is pretty clean and well kept but that’s not the point! Essential oils help me relax and put me in a better head space.

Adorable stress ball – I got this little stress ball that is a chubby dog in a yellow hoodie. It’s adorable! I will bring him to squeeze and lift my heart with his cuteness.

Good food – Who doesn’t love good food? I will bring some good snacks like almonds, crackers and hummus and something chocolate for a sweet treat. To take some of the burden off of me, I will order out for lunch. Packing a lunch can take a lot of time so ordering a take away is one less thing for me to do.

Happiness playlist – As a millennial, I love 00s pop and hip hop. Anything that was playing at a middle school dance are the jams that make me smile. Oh and of course I have to have my favorite k-pop tracks in there too! Have you listened to “God’s Menu” from Stray Kids? So good!!

Support plushie – I’m not ashamed that I am an adult that still enjoys plushies and stuffed animals. They’re soft and can make uncomfortable situations bearable. I think I will bring this BT21 Baby Tata or my hippo from Animal Kingdom. Decisions, decisions.

I hope that these few things will help me mentally handle this coming week.

How have you been mentally during this time? I wish you all health and happiness!

Facing Failure

When your fears become a reality it’s scary. My stomach drops and I want to crawl under my desk to hide.

I started a new initiative at work that I was excited about. My boss was excited too. I spoke to all of the parties who would be involved with the initiative before the launch so everyone was on the same page.

The day came and everyone was blind sided somehow. I come in to emails that they are confused and frustrated even though I told everyone the launch date and they were to work shit out themselves.

Now it is on pause. I’m still the newbie at work so I feel like an idiot. I feel stupid for trying to do something innovative.

I can only blame myself for my failure. I clearly missed the mark on communication.

Having my worries realized feels like a win for my anxiety. I can already hear it saying, “of course you failed” and “now nobody is going to want to work with you again. They already don’t like you and now they have another reason why the think you’re shit.”

Is it 5 o’clock yet?

Is it ok to walk around the office with a paper bag over my head?

Continuous Anxiety

My anxiety is with me when I go to bed and wake up in the morning. It comes with me in the shower, rides in the front seat with me in my car and hangs out in my office at work.

It’s with me on my  commute home and sits next to me while I watch the latest season of “The Flash” on Netflix. Anxiety sits in the baby seat in my cart at the grocery store and is lifting weights by my side at the gym.

I feel that I cannot shake anxiety. It is stuck to me like glue.

I have been using CBD oil to try and combat it but it only helps so much. It doesn’t get rid of the racing thoughts, tightness in my chest (that’s not from asthma) or anything like that. It calms me for a bit but then I’m right back to feeling anxious.

My anxiety isn’t intense but it’s more frequent than it has been in a while. Which I don’t appreciate.

For some reason I’m worried about adopting the right cat at the cat cafe that I volunteer at. I worry that some of them won’t get adopted because they’re older (I don’t think they’re old but some people might), are shy/reserved or they aren’t physically pristine on the outside. One of them stress licks his fur off and another had an eye issue but is healed, his face just looks a little different but he’s cute.

I worry that they’ll get sent back to the SPCA where they’ll be euthanized. I don’t wish that for any cat which is why I don’t support the SPCA as an organization. The cafe cats just happen to come from there.

This isn’t the main reason for my anxiety but it certainly adds to it.

I’m All Shook Up

You said it, Elvis!

I seem to always have some annoying health issue going on. At the beginning of the year I was having serious issues with my asthma then I hurt my lower back which caused me severe pain. Now I’m having tremors in my hands.

As many of you who’ve been reading my blog for a while know I love makeup. I love doing my makeup, talking about it, looking at it, all that stuff. I noticed the tremors when I was putting on my mascara and eyeliner a week or two ago.

I thought, “That’s weird. I’ve never been shaky like this before.”

Since then it seems to only be getting worse. It’s worse in the morning then it usually mellows out for the most part by the end of the day. I’m really feeling it this morning so my anxious mind is taking this and running with it.

It’s calming down a little after eating breakfast at the office.

I get so anxious about health related shit. Right now I worry that this is a sign of early on-set Parkinson’s, ALS or MS. I really hope it’s not and it’s something else. The thought of that makes me want to throw up.

I did a little reading and you can have shaky hands from a B12 deficiency, a thyroid issue (which runs in my family) or reacting badly to caffeine.

I’ve rarely had a issue with caffeine, I know my limits and what causes jitters. I can’t drink the very popular cold brew drinks, they have me wired and shaking.

As for B12 I am a vegetarian so getting regular doses of B12 doesn’t always happen. I have started taking supplements for it but it does not seem to be making a difference.

My anxiety is on high. I have an appointment with my doctor but it’s not until next week. I don’t think I can worry I have Parkinson’s for 5 more days.

Cross your fingers for me that I can get in today or tomorrow!

Wishing I was Invisible

Do you ever feel like nothing is going your way? The universe wants to fight and it is winning.

Today I majorly fucked up at work. I had done all of the work for this idea I had to start up an Etsy shop as a fundraising effort. I hadn’t received any emails regarding any purchases being made.

Well there was one. That I found out today about an order somebody made a month ago!

I was mortified to see that this customer reached our 5 times, getting no response from me because I put in the wrong email as the contact email. So stupid of me!! She asked for a refund because it was never sent to her and she gave the shop a 1 star.

I can’t blame her for any of her actions, I would have done the same.

I’m mortified that I had this task that I gave to myself and I totally screwed it up. I let down that customer, the organization, the volunteers who made the product and my co-workers. All because I didn’t put the wrong email as the contact!

I feel like a fool.

It doesn’t help that yesterday during a meeting we were all reminded that we could be let go at any time for no reason. I’m already nervous about that so me totally messing up on our only sale makes me worry that I’ll get fired.

In this moment I wish I could be invisible.

Anxious Thoughts about Failing

As I’ve told you all a million times, I have a serious fear a failure. I think a lot of people do so my situation isn’t entirely unique.

There is so much going on in my life that makes me feel like at any moment I will fail horribly. That my ineptitude will ruin all of the big things going on in my life right now. That I will fail which will derail and destroy everything that I have worked hard to do.

I worry that I will fuck up getting a mortgage for a house, that I don’t make enough money to contribute financially the way I want to, that my piss-poor paychecks will create a rift between my boyfriend and I, that I will destroy my relationship with my mom and probably 100 other things.

(I mention a lot of these things in my last post.)

My mind tells me all of those worries will become reality. That there is little I can do to prevent any of them from happening.

How do you clear your mind when anxiety tells you that you will fail?

Overwhelmed and Anxious

My boyfriend and I are taking a big step and are looking to buy a house together.

I’m absolutely terrified that I’m going to mess up this process. I’m overwhelmed by all the steps it takes to make this happen like getting pre-approved for a mortgage and setting up house tours.

I am afraid of everything that has to go into this process. I feel like I am going to mess everything up for myself and him. That by the end of it I will have ruined our credit scores, destroyed our relationship, get screwed over and be given a ridiculously high mortgage payment.

I have been rather calm lately but now that we have started this process I can’t help but ruminate on the possibly that I will f*ck it all up. That all of the stuff that can go wrong, will go wrong and it will be all my fault.

I’m not adult enough for this. I’m not smart enough to make the best decisions.

Right now I feel like a child who is getting in way over her head.

What if I ruin everything? I can’t repair a credit score or a relationship if I’ve done serious damage to it. I’m so afraid of failing.

 

Anxiety Levels on High

Overthinking every little thing is one of the things my brain does best. The best thing my brain does is make sure that my body is functioning properly. For that I thank my brain!

Lately I have been over analyzing a lot. I’ll be sitting in my office at work then read into every little pause and word in a conversation I’m having with somebody.

My mind immediately goes to, “They’re not texting me back because they’re sick of me” or “They don’t want to talk to me because they think I’m annoying and stupid.” Those thoughts have been spinning so fast that my stomach hurts.

These thoughts have been constant. I keep thinking that I’m not good enough which is why nobody actually loves me. It’s all pretend because people feel bad for me.

I’m at the point where I want to curl up in my bed and sleep for the rest of the day.

When I’m super anxious or in a deep depressive episode my automatic reaction is to hide. My fight or flight response is saying to flee this anxiety by hiding.

In these moments I forget all of my coping mechanisms. Do you ever have that experience? I’ve learnt all of these ways to help but then I get into the thick of it and my anxiety coping skills are gone.

I hope that you’re getting through an anxious moments that you’re having with finesse.

My Fears: Everybody Hates Me

Since I wrote a few days ago about my fear of being fired from my job, I figured I would do a series about my different fears sustained by my anxiety. This one is about my fear that everyone secretly hates me.

I have thought that everyone hates me since I was a child. I don’t know where it originally came from but anxiety always told me that. I often thought my friends were friends with me for pity and not because they wanted to hang out with me.

As my mental illness developed as I grew up, I felt that way more and more.

I mainly have felt this way in romantic relationships. With my first boyfriend at the age of 15, I thought he was dating me for pity. I thought he was so cute, cool and 16 that there was no way he actually wanted to date me.

That feeling was solidified after I found out he was cheating on me with another girl. It told me that I am not enough.

Fast forward to 22 and I felt that way again with my ex and now at 25 I still have those feelings about my current boyfriend.

I worry that deep down he hates me. I worry that he is with me because he feels sad for me. I worry that he is always on the verge of breaking up with me especially if there’s an argument.

Whenever there’s a rough patch I think, “Omg, this is the end. He’s going to break up with me.” So far that hasn’t happened, we have been together for 2 years.

It’s this deep insecurity that I have always had inside me. That I am not good enough and not worthy of love. That my mental illness and other weird quirks are a turn off, making people run away from me as quickly as possible.

Anxiety screams so loudly in my mind that it is often difficult to tune out. On repeat it tells me that everybody hates me and is planning to leave me.

My therapist has worked hard to try and tell me that my anxiety is wrong. That there are many people who care about me, she even had me create a list once! She asked me to really think, without anxiety’s influence, about who I know does not hate me.

Maybe I should do that again but I’m not sure if it will curb these thoughts.

Hope you guys are all doing well!

— Megan