The Tiny Terror of Daily Life

It's always there.

Waiting.

It could go off at any second.

Entirely unpredictable, it waits until you're least expecting it to strike.

It feeds on your deepest fears. It promises an unpredictable battle that leaves you flushed and flustered and caught off guard. It thrives on other peoples' energies.

One of my biggest daily fears.

The   t e l e p h o n e.

Aside from just being dramatic there, I mean it. I HATE telephones. I dislike their existence as a means of communication. I dislike them for SO MANY REASONS. 

Note 1: The main aspect of my strategies for managing my anxiety (or, more so, one of my ways of ensuring that I don't become overwhelmed by anxiety and break down into a panic attack in public) is to try and plan/control the situations that I find myself in. It's not a foolproof strategy, but I find that knowing, for the most part, what I will be doing and when and with whom helps me get through the day.

Note 2: A lot of my anxiety is rooted in a fear of letting people down or disappointing people that are counting on me. I really hate the feeling of knowing (or at least believing) that someone is unhappy and that it is, at least in part, my fault. Or, at least, I could have done more to prevent it. 

So, as you can likely infer from that, I should likely not be in a customer service position but GUESS WHAT. While customer service winds up being what I do for only about 10% of my day at most, it accounts for likely 80% (or more) of my stress and anxiety at work. 

You may be thinking "Ok but why? It's just a phone, big whoop. Suck it up and deal with it, it's your job." That's what I try and think, too. But now this brings us back to my aforementioned notes.

I cannot control who calls me. I cannot control when they call. I cannot control why they call. I cannot control the circumstances that have lead them to call. Most likely, if they're calling my office, it's for 3 reasons: they need to pay a bill, talk to someone specific, or because for some reason, they're really unhappy about something. The reason they may be unhappy is 99.99% of the time not my fault, and I also probably can't directly solve their problem. So it should be no issue to just explain to them that we will do everything possible to resolve the issue and then make sure they wind up talking to the right person, right? 

Except that my anxiety decides to step in. 

So this is what a typical phone call looks like for me:

The phone rings. I let it ring twice so that I can take a few deep breaths before I even pick up. I check the area code to prepare for which language the call will likely be in. I give myself a quick pep talk of "come on it's just a phone call, it's probably no big deal, you can do it." I answer in my best 'customer service voice' (anyone who has worked customer service knows how this is different from a normal voice) and I PRAY that they just need something easy. Most of the time, from there I just transfer them, and that's that, mission accomplished, tadaa, gold star. But sometimes, they respond to me screaming already. Or they ask a question that I have no idea how to answer. And then I'm so on edge and my pulse races and I feel like I can't breathe and nothing feels right and I'm going to make things worse because I'm a failure and they never should have hired me and we'll lose a customer and it will be my fault and everyone will blame me. 

Of course that's not what happens, but my anxiety works in worst-case-scenarios. 

The daily battles of anxiety are sometimes the hardest.

"Everyday is a struggle even when I'm at my best. My anxiety is always with me and my panic taps me on my shoulder a few times a day. On my good days I can brush it off. On my bad days I just want to stay in bed." ~ Unknown

A Breath of Fresh Air

Last week I checked out.

It was one of the best things I've done for myself in a long time.

It's not often we are given the opportunity to take a whole week for ourselves and focus on self-care and stress reduction, but this is exactly what I was lucky enough to do.

I left bright and early Saturday morning to catch a flight off to Winnipeg, where my best friend of many years picked me up, and we headed straight down to St. Paul, Minnesota for a concert (100000% worth it, best decision ever).

We got back to my home town on Monday, and I spent the rest of the week hanging out with my mom and dad, and my brother and sister-in-law. Yoga, hockey games, dinners, movies, making jewellery, pedicures, reiki, the works.

Taking this time for me was hard, honestly. I felt so guilty leaving my daily life behind. The timing wasn't great due to personal reasons, but I really felt that I needed to step away from everything for a while and just get myself and my priorities back in check.

I finally felt like I could breathe again.

So my message today, to you and to myself, is this: Self-care is SO IMPORTANT.

Self-care is not easy. Self-care takes a lot of effort. Self-care can feel selfish. Self-care can damn well seem impossible sometimes.

But it is SO SO SO SO critical and fundamental and essential and necessary. Taking care of yourself doesn't always mean taking a week off work and leaving the city and going away. Self-care really should be an ongoing process, taking a few moments every day to check in with yourself, see where you're at, and do anything necessary to keep yourself swimming. Self-care doesn't need to be a big, grand event. It can be remembering to take a deep breath a couple times a day. Going for a walk. Making time to do something you love - read a chapter of a book before bed, have a cup of tea when you get home, do a coloring page on your lunch hour, take a few minutes for yoga or stretching in the morning.

You can't pour from an empty cup. You can't stand tall on a broken base. You can't keep swimming if you've got too much weighing you down.

Taking care of yourself is more than just taking care of yourself. For me, taking care of myself means I can continue to take care of the people around me. It's a huge part of my thought processes to always be checking in on other people, and it's sometimes a struggle to turn that inwards. And let's be honest here: it's a lesson that I'm still trying to learn, and I'm honestly not very good at it yet.

Self-care is my mission this month. I am making it a priority to get a better self-care routine in place, to the point that it becomes a habit. I'm trying to take more walks. I'm trying not to skip out on my workouts. I've recently began seeing a new counsellor for my anxiety, and I'm making sure to give that my best effort. I'm trying to get out of the city more. To not feel selfish for taking time for myself. To know that nothing will fall apart if I step away for a few minutes. To know that it's ok to not be ok, and to spend time working on myself.

I'm trying.

"She made a promise to herself to hold her own well-being sacred" ~ Unkown

Let's Take it From the Top

I have a lot to say and really no idea where to start.

I got a lot of reactions after my Facebook post on #BellLetsTalk day, and that's kind of what has driven me to start this blog. Apparently lots of people thought that my post was brave or courageous or whatnot. And while I do appreciate those sentiments, I kind of struggled to accept them, and they have really got me thinking - why? Why do we see posts like that and think that it's brave to admit that we struggle with mental illness? When experiencing mental health issues to some degree is the reality for at least 1/5th of our Canadian population (www.supportcamh.ca), why do we see the admission of it as brave, and not just accept it as normal? And then again, why the hell wouldn't we? Don't we all deserve to be applauded for accepting ourselves and what we've got in a society that pushes us to do exactly the opposite? 

I have no answers right now, I just have a lot of questions. 

Then I also realized that I obviously have anxiety about telling people that I have anxiety, which is horribly twisted and ironic. But it's true. I am anxious about telling people, as I fear that they will treat me differently or look at me different or coddle me or assume that I am incapable of doing the things that they thought I was capable of doing yesterday before they knew. I try my best to never use my anxiety as an excuse - I am capable of doing most everything, it just might be a challenge for me where it may not be for others. So yeah, hearing the reactions after my post have made me anxious about the fact that people know that I'm anxious. Bah.

So, anyways, that's why I'm starting this blog. I think I also just need to be writing more, as I really enjoy it and I think my friends are starting to get sick of me ranting to them about everything (actually my anxiety tells me that they have been sick of it since they met me and they all just tolerate me but we'll get to that later). Also I'm trying to incorporate more creativity in to my life, because I think it might help me - my life has become very technical lately and I miss creating things.

So yes, on this platform, I will talk a lot about the things in my life that give me anxiety. I think I'm doing this so that people can kind of see what anxiety might be like, so that when someone that they care about comes to them and says "oh gosh well, I have anxiety, and I don't think I can do that," they know why. Or they can understand better what it means to deal with anxiety. And then I'll talk about other things that are not anxiety-related because I have an opinion about a lot of things and because honestly I need a break sometimes. And then I'll probably talk about having anxiety more, because that's my reality.

Now, on that note, everything that I write about here are my own opinions and my own experiences, and that does not mean that they are unanimous and universal to all people that deal with anxiety. Anxiety effects different people in so many different ways, and beyond that, my social situation and worldview is entirely unique to me and therefore can't directly apply to anyone and everyone, so please try to keep that in mind and I will do the same. I will try to cite any statistics and whatnot that I throw in, as well. 

I think that's a good introduction. We'll see how this goes, we'll learn and try new things together. 

"I'm starting to realize that people lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel." - John Green, Paper Towns