If it wasn’t bad enough, being a guilty person by nature, I now get guilt about not updating content and doing “groovy” and “hip” social media updates… ugh, mental headslap! We’ve been on holiday for a week now and for the majority of the time I’ve been worrying about all the things I am NOT DOING!! RIDICULOUS …so much anxiety! I’ve even been having anxiety dreams about people I have never even met before, but who I follow on Instagram, completely throwing shade in my direction. WTF…
I am prone to anxiety. It’s a feeling I’ve lived with most of my life but only been able to label it since my early 20’s. It’s like a big green sea that swells now and again there is nothing to do but ride out the waves of nausea inducing fear/paranoia that pools at the base of my stomach. The sea subsides, gradually, the nausea dissipates and I learn new coping mechanisms until the next tsunami of deep rooted anxieties washes over me.
As anybody with deep rooted anxiety will say, it’s exhausting, especially if your anxieties are barbed and tightly wound around lose of control. When it comes to having kids, that’s pretty much permanent anxiety, for me.
I worry about health, illness, sickness, germs, food, drinking, cleanliness, contracting illness etc. All totally irrational, uncontrollable, and lets face it, product of a “1st world problems”. Not something I am proud to admit. There I go again, guilty and ashamed of my anxieties…does it ever end. But the mix of the above anxieties and children leave me feeling permanently sick and drained.
Since our families first bout of illness this February I still haven’t shaken my last green tsunami and my biggest fear is looming, that I’ll never feel peacefulness again. So, I start to explore my coping mechanisms, taking time out, looking for avenues of light relief from family life, getting perspective from unrelated sources and trying to see through my specific triggers. There is no cure, there will be no cure. There are many sticking plasters, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Mindfulness, Yoga, Talking Therapies but I have yet to find anything that has quashed my greatest fears and I’m too fearful to find out what that would be, actually experience my greatest fear!!? Never.
xx