A few years ago, I had to face the fact that my mental health wasn't great. I started on an anti-depressant and began therapy, and was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. It soon became obvious that the meds were helping the depression, but boy, I was left to realize how anxious I felt. Since then I've spent a lot of time realizing how much of my behavior has been dictated by those anxious feelings.
(Spoiler: it's most of the time.)
I thought it was normal to feel a little nauseous about new experiences, that I just took longer than other people to "settle in", and that I was irritable and angry a lot of the time, not riddled with nerves. But conversations in therapy helped me realize that maybe I wasn't just angry at the world--maybe I was mis-identifying how I felt. Slowly I began to recognize just how much of my time I spent really anxious, clinically anxious, and how it was affecting everything I did.
As a musician who's spent a lot of time performing both by myself and in all kinds of ensembles, performance anxiety is one thing, and a certain amount of it is normal. Generally, the only times I didn't feel at least a little keyed up before playing were performances I genuinely didn't care about. Thankfully, these were few and far between for me, and sometimes they happened due to things like being physically sick. (Ask me sometime about throwing up while auditioning at Florida State.) This is different. This anxiety permeated everything I did, even things I loved, even things I objectively knew I was good at and had mastered. Even little things: Stressing over answering emails. Going to appointments. Going to the gym where people could see me not looking my best.
Anxiety resulted in a lot of stuff that caused me harm, like focusing too much on what others thought of me/how I looked/how I sounded/performed/what I said--you can guess how that affected my self-esteem. It also affected my relationships, because being irritable all the time meant I snapped at the people closest to me a lot, even when I didn't want to, and often I didn't understand why. Not only is that no way to live within myself, it's no way to treat the people I love, and I didn't like how snapping at my loved ones made me feel afterward (guilt spiral, anyone?).
So I started trying to be mindful when I felt peevish and snappish, mentally taking a step back and examining why the snappage was happening. I realized that much of the equation was me and how I felt, not the thing the other person said or did that triggered the irritable comment on my part. Gradually that mindful step back helped me take just enough space to try and change my reaction. I also learned to set better boundaries, and to state what I need more clearly. For example, my husband often likes to greet me and then talk about his day and ask me all sorts of questions right after I get home from work. I'm tired, it's late afternoon, I need a snack...prime contributors to nasty feelings and nasty comments. It's taken awhile, but I've learned to say, "Hey, I need a minute or 5 to decompress. You can ask me this stuff in a little bit." This has helped a lot--anxiety is always there, but I can mitigate the other factors that make me lash out.
Pausing, taking deep breaths, and yoga have all been helpful too. It's amazing how much tension we store in our bodies; yoga has helped me be more physically aware and also helps me release some of that tension so I'm more able to handle my emotions. I've also curtailed the amount of news and current events that I consume, because it's always bad, and most of the time I can't do anything about it.. Haven't given up on my true-crime podcasts though :)
One of the areas I've recently found that I still need to work on is how I handle splitting tasks at home. I, to my shame, am a bit of a micro-manager, always telling my hubby how to do stuff or just doing it myself. We've had lots of conversations (okay, arguments) about it. It finally dawned on me that maybe my anxiety, which makes me want to control everything around me, is dictating this too, that it won't be "right" unless it's done exactly my way. Which, rationally, I know isn't true. I mean, I wouldn't have married the man if I didn't trust him. Why wouldn't I be able to trust him to wash the dishes/do laundry/care for our children?
At some point I've just got to let it go. So I'm putting that into the mental space I take when I feel that anxiety rear up at home--he's just as capable as me, and it actually helps me not to have to do this, and our toddler's clothes being mismatched or dishes put back in odd places are not the end of the world.
Also, it's funny how it's the small stuff like missing socks or towels folded the wrong way that drive me over the edge. But coping when our first son was in the NICU, and now our second being in braces for club feet, doesn't. Maybe those "big" things take up enough space mentally and emotionally that there's not enough room left for the little ones.
I dunno, I don't have much wisdom here. Just the things I've gone through and what I'm learning along the way. I told my therapist not too long ago that I wanted to be able to love myself where I was, physically and emotionally, and not constantly only see the things that I perceive as "wrong". Inch by inch I'm moving forward on that path.
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