I have rescheduled therapy! And after a really sharp spike in anxiety (I woke up literally everyday this week to my brain telling me to complete tasks that were both inconsequential and didn't actually exist) that led to a very mild panic attack at work and the inability to determine if the tightness in my lungs is from anxiety or potential illness, talking through options for ways to stop feeling heightened most of the time can't come soon enough.
That said, most of my week was stressful, but not necessarily overwhelming. I laughed with friends and coworkers, I joke with my students, I even managed to go to 3 different social functions this weekend and felt mostly fine. Or at least as fine as I can right now.
And I'm like, kind of happy? Which is a welcome relief from the past few weeks. I know I still need to go through with therapy, and maybe even check out the terrifying world of meds if other coping strategies don't work as well as I need them to. I realize it probably sounds very stigmatizing to say I'm terrified of medication, and I don't ever want to make anyone feel that way, so to clairify:
I know so many people that medication has helped, and that it is a blessing to a lot of people to be able to feel healthy while dealing with chronic mental health concerns. It's no different than any other drug that allows someone with any kind of physical ailment or condition to live their life fully. I know that. I know all of those things. And yet I hold onto this bizarre idea that what is good for other people is not okay for me. Ever since I was young, I have felt compassion and love for people who are outside of what some might consider "normal", even been mad at the use of such a term at all, and yet I find myself unable to extend that same love to me.
I was never comfortable in my larger lady skin as a teenager (an issue that I'm still working on if I'm honest), even though I think body positivity is so important and try to encourage others to love the skin their in.
I didn't
I tended not to speak up in groups both because I'm naturally introverted, and because I don't want my words to take up too much space, but would be frustrated if someone else felt like they couldn't share.
I have spent years not dealing with whatever my personal combination of depression and anxiety is called because I should be able to fix it myself, even though I would never say that to another human.
Because those things aren't the brand of normal that my home town was selling. Their normal was much more...typical. Girls as pretty as me were thin. Gay people were making bad choices. Loud kids who overshared were rude and unruly. Depression was something that happened for a while and then you got over it.
To be fair to the village that raised me, those weren't necessarily exact words, or even the sentiments they were trying to convey, but somehow it's still what I heard. And it stuck. And my anxiety ran with it. And it taught me that if I wanted to be accepted by people I needed to look and act a certain way above and beyond how other people have to act. And heaven help me if I made a mistake or didn't do something perfectly.
It wasn't until the end of college that it occurred to me that my ideas about the world or what people thought about me might not be a) what I thought they were or b) all that important. But being "normal" was a coping mechanism I'd learned too hard for too long to just turn it off.
It takes conscious effort, daily, minute by minute, to not adjust my every action by the social cues I read (and misread) around me. Some of this is just the way humans work. Interactions and exchanges shape the course of a day and reading cues is how we perform pretty much any task that involves another person. But for someone that already struggles to grasp some kinds of nuance in social interaction, and is also highly empathetic, a day full of second guessing whether or not interactions went well or my actions were the best fit for a situation is exhausting. Especially if any perceived failure is then dissected and scrutinized for everything I did badly.
When my depression spiked a few years ago and I was having a lot of trouble with negative self statements and thoughts, one of my good friends bought me an adorable hamster Squishable as a coping strategy. It's a big round fluffy stuffed animal that reminds me of Hamtaro, and it is meant to represent my small and vulnerable self when my negative thoughts get overwhelming. Basically if I thought something about myself that I would feel bad about saying to Dr. Schnitzenfreud, it was probably not something I should say to me either.
This little cuddle muffin of a stuffie had done nothing wrong and is simply trying to live it's best hamster life. I would never call it stupid, or tell it it was bad at it's job, or that it's too broken to function.
So why would I say those things to me? Doesn't my tiny, hamster-like inner self also get to feel the love that I would gladly bestow on a stuffed animal? If I wouldn't say those words to a toy, let alone another person, why in the world would I say them to me? Why is it so easy for me to build others up and so hard to give myself the same grace, care, and dignity?
I have answers for none of those questions except that depression sucks, and I hope if anyone else struggles with similar thoughts or feelings that you reach out to someone you trust to share it with them. Because there's enough shit to deal with in this life without piling it on yourself.
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