This was another difficult week. I have not felt well all week long. I've had a headache pretty much since Monday evening and I haven't slept well in two weeks either. My goal is simple to try to reach 2500 steps per day and if I can get some zone minutes in there by walking that's great. If not, well that's okay too. I'm being gentle on myself. I just feel like one gigantic poo ball. I have a very very long segment on anxiety below. PS> I know I dropped the ball and it didn't release on Sunday like it was supposed to. Frankly, my anxiety has been down right crippling and doing this wasn't an option. Hopefully, I'm on the way to recovery because I felt like getting this done this morning.
Not a pretty picture and maybe I can edit this later to include a picture, but I walked 21,458 steps this week. Sunday 3330 Monday 5383 Tuesday 3350 Wednesday 3209 Thursday 2055 (did not make it, but I wasn't feeling well) Friday 3651 (anxiety pacing) Saturday 480 (yep. I barely moved, but I'm being kind to myself) Picture it | Anxiety is a little funny looking creature with tentacle fingers. Anxiety is always around, but if I put my foot down and utilize tools to get rid of anxiety then it doesn't turn into a panic attack. Anxiety is one of those things just waiting for an opportunistic moment to strike and boy did it strike yesterday. I could get into the whys, but the reasonings are so long. HISTORY | I had undiagnosed Lyme Disease FROM 1995 TO 2007. I would get these episodes that appeared in every sense of the word to be anxiety panic attacks, but I knew in my heart they were not. Doctors would perform test after test and ultimately say that it was anxiety. Ultimately, I decided to give the meds a shot. The medications really didn't take care of most of the issues. Sure it took care of the anxiety portion, but it didn't take care of the physical symptoms I was having on a daily basis because get this they weren't anxiety induced! I had a couple of full blown panic attacks in which the medications DID reduce my physical symptoms. I started to learn which symptoms were panic and which were not panic. FRIDAY ATTACK | I had a trigger and anxiety has been knocking at my door all week long. Friday afternoon I opened the door and let panic walk right in and enter my body. The first 30 minutes or so I wasn't even sure what was going on, but then it hit me. I needed instinct to kick in and use tools that I used over a decade ago to help me because my husband wasn't home and wouldn't be for a couple of hours. I never let people in when I'm in the middle of an attack because I don't like people to see or hear me that way, but back in probably 2005, What's the harm in letting someone know when you're having a panic attack and allowing someone else help?" I reached out to two best friends by 5pm and had help until my husband could get home. I texted my very best friend to ask if he could take a phone call because I was having a panic attack (I knew he could possibly be at work and it that was the case he wouldn't be able to take the call). He was available. I talked with him from 5:22 until my husband walked through the door. I have a whole list of things that happened while I was on the phone with my bestie, but he kept me leveled down when things were getting out of control. We've known each other for 30 years. He called me when his Mom died on February and I started pacing immediately. My husband went into fix it mode and drove me over to his house so that I could greet the family when they arrived home. We've seen each other on our worst days and I knew that he could keep me relatively calm even if it meant over 2,000 steps while talking to him. Men aren't always good at picking up clues, but when I'm in this mode it's like my husband goes into super hero mode. Anxiety makes me lose my appetite. I've not been hungry for a few days so I should have known what was the culprit, but I didn't recognize it until it was too late. He began fixing me something to eat. He knows me and knows I won't eat a big meal, but also knew I needed some protein so he grabbed a pork chop and started baking it. At this point I had walked over 3,000 steps and fatigue was setting in even though I was till shivering & tremoring. I walked to the bedroom and put on my 15 pound weighted blanket. He recognized at this point that I was ready to put the tools into place. He asked if I wanted "You & I" which is this CD I used to have where this lady named Lucinda walks through a guided breath situation as well as two other parts. He had put it on a mp3 player many years ago and knew where I stashed it. He put that together and started playing it. Then he turns off the lights. I ask him to lay down with me. I then realize I'm getting very very sleepy and tell him if I fall asleep before the food finishes, just let me sleep. However, I did not. I wound up eating maybe 1/3 of the pork chop, but that's better than nothing. I decided by 8pm that going to sleep was my best option and because I had some pain (which was part of the trigger actually) I decided Tylenol would be my best bet. I contemplated whether or not I should take another medication which typically would put me to sleep in about 15 minutes. My husband figured out how to loop the Mp3 so that Lucinda would be talking all night long. that way if I woke up (and I did) that I'd hear her talking about deep breathing or whatever else and focus on that an fall back to sleep. Likely due to the talking I didn't get much deep sleep or much REM, but at least I did get SOME sleep. Previous panic attacks have lead to vomiting in the middle of the night and I didn't vomit. I will call that a win. The trigger is still happening, but we have a game plan on how to tackle it. The game plan can't happen until Monday and we might have to talk a lot about the trigger this weekend which may result in more attacks, but at least now I remember my tools. It may not take away anxiety, but at least it gives me some control.
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