Category Archives: Anxiety

Sick and Tired

Posted by dkrashb on

It’s Monday morning.  I wake up with a throbbing headache.  I assume it’s because I slept funny.  It only gets worse the longer I’m up so I start pounding the coffee thinking it’s a caffeine withdrawal headache because I’ve been drinking too much coffee lately.  It still doesn’t relent.

It’s Monday afternoon. It’s clear to me that I have caught something.  My throat burns and feels like it’s swelling when I talk.  The pain in my jaw tells me this is a sinus headache.  I begin to sound like a kid who really needs to blow her nose.  I am so cold.  I pull on a down jacket, extra socks, my shearling slippers, and wrap a blanket around my legs while I work at my desk.

I hate being sick.  My strategy is to ignore it for as long as possible.  It’s the “if I deny I am getting sick, perhaps it will simply go away” approach.  Amazingly, this approach often works for me if I do two things besides pretend I’m not getting sick:  take some vitamins and get extra rest.

Unfortunately, for me today there is no rest for the weary.  And I’m not feeling like going out in the pouring rain after any immune-system boosting vitamins.  I sink under the fatigue when my work day finally concludes and decide to just lay on the couch playing solitaire.

I am convinced that solitaire may in fact be part of a large conspiracy to take over the world.  Now that solitaire is available in every electronic form and on every electronic device imaginable, I think the plot is picking up steam.  Helpless victims are immobilized for hours at a time, nearly oblivious to events happening around them.  If you want to rule the world, you just have to kick off a massive solitaire event that everyone has to log into at the same time.

But, between my solitaire game and watching TV, I manage to ignore how miserable I feel.  There was a time when just watching TV was enough to occupy my mind and allow me to shutdown.  Now, I seem to require multi-tasking to achieve the same effect.  At what point in life did it become impossible to give my full attention to one thing at a time for more than a few seconds?  I saw an article recently about how people are “multi-tasking free time.”  I find myself wondering if this tendency is contributing to my inability to sleep.

I wonder this, in part, because my husband used to drink massive amounts of caffeine to prevent migraines.  He was constantly guzzling caffeine after a while or a migraine would start.  Realizing that he couldn’t spend the rest of his life drinking that much coffee and Coke, he decided to quit drinking caffeine all together.  He was pretty miserable for about 2 months, but without consuming caffeine, he went for over a year without a single migraine.  As it turned out, the preventative was also the cause.

In my case, multi-tasking solitaire and TV has become my signal to turn off the brain and shutdown for the night.  It gives those nagging parts of my brain something to do other than replay conversations I had earlier in the day, wondering if I said the wrong thing, thinking about up coming conversations and what I should be sure to say, worrying that I’ve forgotten something important, or reliving high-anxiety moments that cause adrenaline rushes even in just remembering them.  These kinds of thoughts lead to a racing brain while I lie in bed trying to go to sleep.  Even when I am so exhausted that I do fall right to sleep, these thoughts infiltrate my dreams, take over my sleep, and rouse me out of bed in the middle of the night, demanding that I take some sort of action.

My brain is not kind.  It has no concerns about dumping massive chemicals into my body that I have no use for–after all, it’s not like I need to jump up and run away from a tiger.  It is unconcerned that I desperately need sleep to restore and recover both physical and mental well being.  It has no compassion, no basic human decency to just lay there quietly and let me sleep.

And once I have a few nights of little or disturbed sleep, like my husband’s caffeine, it becomes a contributor to the problem.  With not enough rest, I am less tolerant of the stressors that arise throughout the day.  I am more likely to allow things to come out of my mouth that I wish I could take back later.  I am more likely to forget to do something important that wakes me up in the middle of the night.  I have more gaps in my memory that lead to worrying about whether something is done or not.  This, then contributes to more bad nights.

So, I have developed a strategy to turn off these brain functions before I go to bed.  Solitaire and TV seem to give my busy mind something to focus on besides the things that produce stress for me.  I suspect that doing both of them together helps keep me from getting so engaged in either one that I get overly involved and more riled up.  I often find myself nodding off in the middle of a solitaire game as long as the TV show isn’t too much of an adrenaline rush.  Although, to tell the truth, I’ve managed to fall asleep during some pretty hairy scenes from time to time.

We used to just watch the Andy Griffith Show.  I love that show.  It’s silly and funny, but based on values like respecting others (including children), working out problems in a mutually agreeable way, and caring about people more than things.  When I find myself on a wave of accumulation, watching the Andy Griffith Show helps put things back in perspective.  How many TV shows were made where the main characters each had the same 3 outfits over 7 seasons?  I started falling to sleep with uncomplicated thoughts and feeling pretty content when I went to sleep to Andy Griffith.

Now, out of Andy Griffith shows to watch, I find I need the distractions to get my mind off of whatever bone its chewing and relax.  Yet, sometimes, something kicks in and I want to play one more game of solitaire, watch one more on-demand episode.  Then, I cannot get to sleep.  I have now developed the bad habit of taking the iPad to bed with me, surreptitiously to read for a little bit so I can go to sleep.  But I find myself often having a hard time not playing solitaire instead.  And, solitaire by itself is less likely to make me fall asleep than solitaire in combination with TV.  It becomes a compulsion to play one more game.  If I lose, I think “I’ll just play one more so I can win one before I quit.”  If I win, I think “I’ll just play one more since I’m on a roll–I might get a new high score.”  My cure has become my cause.

Tonight, I feel so awful.  I want nothing more than a sound night of sleep.  But once again, I cannot stop playing solitaire.  I am wide awake a midnight.  I do a mental equivalent of prying the iPad out of my clenched fingers and setting it aside to recharge.  I think, “If it can recharge for the night, so can I.”  I close my eyes and do my best to get comfortable.  But I ache everywhere in spite of the Ibuprofen I took for my headache.

I try to just pay attention to my breathing, feeling the air coming in and out of my body.  But my mind jumps up and races off somewhere I don’t want to go.  I try to reel it back in, but I’m strangely fascinated.  My curiosity wants to follow it even though I know it’s not leading me anywhere good.  I feel weak, like I can’t resist the urge to follow.  Before I know it, it is 1AM and I am still wide awake.

Because I have been referred to a sleep specialist in the past, I know I am a) not supposed to do anything besides sleep in bed (like read), b) not lay in bed when I’m not asleep, and c) not expose myself to bright light when it’s sleep time.  So what do I do?  I get out the iPad again while still in bed, only this time I turn to a book, turn the brightness down as low as it will go, and start to read.  I get through about 2 pages and am barely awake enough to set the iPad aside before falling asleep.  Go figure.

Ah Ha

Posted by dkrashb on

On Friday night, we have dinner with our hosts.  Our new tradition is to go to La Casita, a little Mexican joint on Bethel Rd that we all like.  Tonight, it’s hopping.  Gill, Pat, and I arrive first.  Gina will meet us there, coming directly from work.  It’s only 5:30PM when we arrive with the blue hair crowd. We have no trouble getting a table, but by the time Gina arrives, the restaurant is full.

We have our dinner and a round of margaritas.  Then, Gill and I, Gill having had no alcohol and me having consumed only 1/2 of my margarita in the past hour and a half, drive the two cars back while Gina and Pat order another round.  Gill drives the two of us back to the restaurant again and we return to our table to hang out until two friends Gina and I are meeting arrive.  We send Gill and Pat home when Vivienne and Andrea get there.  Gina and I are now free to indulge in margaritas knowing that Gill, who doesn’t drink, will safely get us home when we are ready.

Unfortunately, I have a hard time letting go of feeling like we’re inconveniencing others.  It’s Friday night and we have already occupied the table for 2 hours by the time our friends arrive.  I watch the crowd grow–standing at the door holding beepers–and try not to feel bad.  I am not sure if my conscientiousness when it comes to making people wait came from some childhood trauma or if it’s just normal politeness, but I seem to have honed in on “Thou Shalt Not Make Others Wait” in etiquette while I am simultaneously oblivious to many other basic rules of consideration.  So much so that things like sitting at a light for more than a split second after it turns green creates anxiety in me.

I had to learn early in my career not to be several minutes early to meetings because it not only wasted my time, but it made others think I didn’t have enough work to do.  Learning to be fashionably late to parties was another tough adjustment.  I’m still often the first to arrive.  This is a case where my impulse not to keep others waiting puts me in the awkward position of potentially inconveniencing the host by arriving before he or she is ready for guests.

In cases where I know the host well, I have made arrangements to come over early and help with prep just so I won’t have to go through this anxiety.  In cases where the host is an acquaintance, I have sat in my car contemplating which is more awkward:  to be the only person at the party or to be seen sitting outside in my car.  This led to the practice of drive-bys.

Tonight, when we decide to pay the check and start over when our friends arrive, I try to dispel my anxiety by tipping the waitress generously.  Apparently it wasn’t generous enough because she doesn’t seem to notice and I am still anxious.

Our friends arrive and I’m relieved that one of them orders food.  I order another margarita not because I want to drink it but just to try to run up our tab a bit.  When it comes, I take two sips and realize that I desperately need water, but I’m not about to ask for it.

After everyone has had their fill of food and beverages, we decide to head over to Vivienne’s house.  I tip the waitress more generously this time.  I do a calculation of what her total tips would have been had she turned the table over 2x with 4 people ordering entrees, which seems about right since we’ve now been there 3 1/2 hours.  Apparently I did my math correctly; this time she smiles at me and says thank you when she walks by after taking the checks.

Now that I have alleviated my anxiety, I relax and enjoy this collection of women.  We are an eclectic mix.  Gina and I became the best of friends after sharing an office at work.  Interestingly, sharing office space seems to work well for me when it comes to making friends.  Many of the closest friends I have are women I shared space with most of the day Monday-Friday for some period of my life.  My other friends, Andrea and Vivienne, I met through Gina.

The three of them, along with a collection of other wise and wonderful women, had formed a book club around Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth.  Gina and I, as close as we were, had never ventured into such topics.  I was never particularly interested in anything related to “spirituality.”

It’s funny how you can push away something and have no interest in it and then it suddenly pops up at a moment some window opened a crack when you weren’t looking.

When I got past the point in life when I was dreaming about what my future would be like and instead realizing that the future had come and gone while I wasn’t looking, I was left asking myself, “Is this it?”  As I matured (if that’s what we call it), drama receded into stability and with stability, life somehow lost its luster.  I suspect the timing of this sudden sense of disappointment was also a factor of not having children.  Without the distraction of young people taking up my time and energy, I had the space to notice that my life was disappointingly mediocre.

There I was with this little nagging feeling that there had to be more to life when Gina introduced me to Vivienne and Andrea and A New Earth.  For me, A New Earth introduced a new world.  The simple state of Being and simply feeling present allowed me to feel connected to life in a way I’d never felt before.  Although these teachings have apparently been around in countless forms for thousands of years, this book was like a portal into a realm I’d never entered before.  Unfortunately, like so many lessons in my life, it was fleeting and I found myself completely losing the ability to experience a sense of connectedness as quickly as I discovered it.

As I continued to explore Tolle’s teachings with my girlfriends, I got further away from the experience of and more into thinking about those teachings.  Eventually, we stopped pretending to be meeting about the book and just got together to socialize.  The realization that laughing and sharing together was a lot easier than seeking enlightenment overtook us.  Truthfully, a glass of wine with empathetic friends is its own form of enlightenment.

Now, at Vivienne’s house, Vivienne and Andrea introduce a new book to us.  It’s called Nonviolent Communication.  I have to smile.  I have been curious about Nonviolent Communication for some time.  I have seen flyers for workshops, received emails advertising classes, and seen references to it repetitively enough to realize the blinds have been pulled up even if the window hadn’t quite opened yet.  Now, here is a book on the topic and friends who want to learn it’s content together.

I am thrilled to have something new to read and secretly hope it will help me reestablish my lost connection.  But a little bell goes off in my head somewhere behind all the excitement: seeking is not the way to find.  Being is just being and you can’t find it by looking for it; you find it by doing it.  I am reminded of one of my favorite Yoda quotes (gotta love StarWars wisdom):  “Do or do not; there is no try.”

I appreciate the wisdom and insights my friends bring to our discussion.  Every time I talk with them, I learn something new and have many ah-ha moments.  It’s funny how addictive momentary insight can be.  It gives me the impression that I’m getting somewhere.

As we wind down the evening, I wonder how much of this book will actually make its way into daily practice in my life.  I wonder what space I will need to make for it and how much time incorporating it will take.  I wonder why reading about changing behavior is so exciting while actually changing it is so burdensome.  I think about the cycle of hope and despair that comes from the belief that we can change.  That we can be better people. We can feel connected and fulfilled.  And then, the realization that maybe we can, but it’s hard.  It requires making choices–consciously stopping mindless habits that happen on autopilot and choosing a new way instead.  Finding the energy to even notice mindless habits is often the most difficult part.  I smile, amused at myself, as I think, “Maybe this time it will be different.”

Urban Anxiety

Posted by dkrashb on

For 10 years, we lived in what I would describe as an “urban residential area.” Located North of the Columbus downtown area, the walk to restaurants, the grocery store, the library, the farmers market was an easy endeavor. At the same time, we were nestled into a wooded ravine, keeping us cocooned and creating separation from city activity. We spent a year a few miles further North where there was less separation, but also a little less busyness. Now, we live on one of the busier streets in Chattanooga in an apartment with a balcony that oversees it all. The view of the downtown skyline is fantastic–I love keeping the blinds open so I can look out over the park across the street, the bridges over the river, and the cityscape. Being in walking distance of the majority of the things we want or need to do every day is also a big plus. But it’s definitely different.

For us, it’s a small step from where we lived before, but the noise has been an adjustment. Fireworks at the baseball stadium across the river sounded like they were going off right outside our window. We learned about the summer concert series across the river because we thought a band was playing in our living room. When large trucks go by during the day, I have to mute my phone to avoid disturbing conference calls. And, perhaps most surprising to me, sirens scream by every single day. I had no idea there could be so many fires in a town with about 300,000 residents!

We recently met a young guy who told us he had moved here about a week before we did from some small town in Tennessee that I had never heard of. He told us the name of the “big city” he had to drive to as a kid in order to see a movie. The “big city” was another small town I’d never heard of. Walking with him across the street, when I went to push the button for a walk signal, he thought I was walking off the wrong direction. When I explained my intention, he laughed and said he was from such a small town that it never occurred to him he was supposed to push a button to cross the street. I imagined a small town where he could step out in the street unassisted by lights and if a car happened to be going by, they would stop to say hello. This must be a completely different world to him.

While adjusting to the noise is a bit of a challenge (and may have something to do with why I’m only sleeping 4-5 hours a night these days), I wouldn’t give up our location. Convenience is a great benefit. For one, we can see our new bank from our balcony, which has made setting up new accounts a lot easier. We try to take a walk each morning along the riverfront between my first burst emails in the morning and settling down to work steadily for the rest of the day (and, more often than I would like, the evening). The other day, as we were strolling by the bank, our new banker was arriving. He stopped to chat with us for a minute. I can’t remember ever having a banker whom I’ve met once and then seemed like a friend the next time I ran into him. I think of my small-town acquaintance and how nice it feels to be recognized as part of the neighborhood.

As far as feeling like being part of the community goes, we haven’t made a lot of progress there yet. Working from home doesn’t lend itself well to meeting new people. And working a lot limits the time available for activities that promote making new friends. It’s easier to just jump on my bike for a ride whenever I can work it in than it is to have to be somewhere at a specific time. This leads to watching people more than being with people. Part of my problem is putting work away. It was easier to stop working when my office wasn’t across the room 24×7. Now, I think of something I forgot to do and I go do it. Once I get started, I find other things I need to do and soon, hours have gone by. Work often consumes me.

I also have a new anxiety about my career. I worry that because no one sees me answering emails at 5AM, on a conference call at 11:00PM, creating presentations at 8PM, etc. that if I step out to go get lunch late in the afternoon and miss a call, an email, an instant message, people will think I’m slacking. I’m not sure who I think would see me if I were in the office at those times, but I worry all the same. It makes it harder to put work away.

On the plus side, I can take my laptop out on the balcony for as long as I can stand the heat and enjoy the view unobscured by windows at any time of the day (as long as I’m quick with the mute button since I seem to be on the phone at least 8 hours a day). It’s a tradeoff, but I’m adjusting.

But people watching is interesting. Lots of visitors wander the streets. Chattanooga attracts people from all over. Plus, it’s summer time and the ever-blowing breeze from the river attracts people to the waterfront all on its own. I am not the only one watching. Cameras lace the park areas, observing secluded corners from lamp posts. I always wonder who is watching me as I walk by and what they think I’m up to. Security seems to be a primary concern. Cops patrol on bicycles, Segways, foot, and in cars. Between the cameras and the police presence, I find myself wondering if I’m in danger. Funny thing how security can make you feel insecure. Perhaps the anxieties that motivated people to hang cameras and hire extra cops taps into my own anxieties?

I told myself before we started this venture that I had to remember that no matter where we moved, I was still taking myself with me.  Trying to avoid the disappointment of expecting a new life along with a new place, I coached myself that I couldn’t expect to be a new person.  Yet, I find that I secretly hoped I would leave my anxiety back in Columbus.  My husband once told me when we were planning our great escapade that he worried that even if I didn’t have a job, I would still be me.  He didn’t really mean this as an insult.  🙂  He just meant that I can get obsessed and anxious about anything.  I can take the most enjoyable pastime and turn it into a stressful burden in no time–I’ve even managed to do this with learning relaxation techniques.  It’s a skill I don’t take pride in, but it comes from a lifetime of believing hard work is central to character.  The lesson I continue to try to learn is how to relax into the work.  The philosophy of enjoying the journey as much as the destination comes hard for me.  I constantly remind myself to be where I am, to experience fully what I’m experiencing, and to let the next moment take care of itself.  After all, right now is all we have.  But goals loom large and distract from the joy of each step along the way.

I take a deep breath.  I look out over the view.  I remind myself that I am here, sitting on my balcony, my feet pressed against warm concrete, cars rolling by below, writing purely for the pleasure of writing.  Chattanooga is a beautiful place.  And I am in it.  The early morning light highlights the yellows in the trees, giving the scene freshness.  Birds sing loudly enough to hear them over the traffic.  The breeze still holds the coolness of the night and delivers it to me in soft waves.  I think briefly about the work I didn’t finish yesterday, but bring my attention back to now.  I finish my coffee and put my laptop away far less anxious.