Angels to the Rescue
When I get so consumed with anxiety, the anxiety state becomes my reality. A relative was visiting and having an anxiety attack. After she left, I started to have a rather severe attack myself.
Anxiety is catching. For people like me, it is as catching as the flu. I couldn’t sleep. I felt shaky and was in a downward slide into the negative thought world. By Sunday, I really felt desperate. My body felt like it was on natural speed. I needed to do something to pull myself out of it. I tried anti-anxiety medicine, and it did not even touch it.
When it gets this bad, I play a mind trick: I mentally retire from the world and let an angel named Therese take over my body. I give her a real personality. My husband plays along and talks to Therese. While, generally speaking, relying on multiple personalities is not a helpful route to take, I find it useful as a way to calm myself down. After a few hours of giving myself a chance to get out of the fray, I could feel my body start to relax. Now Sara can wake up and begin to deal with her anxiety problem.
Call it Anxiety 101. When I get like this, it helps me to look at a book where I have written down the steps I should take when I get this way. It is like not remembering someone’s telephone number and having to look it up. The problem is that I forget that the book exists. I was thinking of putting a note next to my bed which will say, “Are you having an anxiety attack? If so, go and look at the anxiety prevention list.”
Currently, I have a drawing of anxiety in action next to my bed. Unfortunately, looking at that drawing just confirms that I am having an anxiety attack. Art is great to show you where you are, but words are necessary to move yourself off the anxiety dime. What helped this week was talking to a doctor who knows me well. After hearing me talk for a bit, he said, “Your thoughts are not your friends.” After the session, I felt more relaxed and admitted to myself that I was thinking very negative thoughts that were not connected to reality. But I have to admit that some of my anxiety scenarios engage me, so it is hard to give them up.
When the anxiety is making me feel so lousy, I try to remember the list of what to do to stop believing my “stinking thinking.” I am not over the anxiety attack, but I am practicing the actions on my list, which includes meditation, focusing exercises, reading self-help books and generally trying to separate my thoughts from my reality. This is hard work, but it does help the black clouds break up, and I can see some blue sky.