I had my bi-weekly therapy appointment this past Tuesday. My definition of bi-weekly is every two weeks. Things are going so well that I asked my therapist if we could move to every three weeks. I really have been doing well. I’ve done a lot of healing and moving on from past traumas and therapy has helped. But therapy doesn’t cure all. My diagnoses remain the same. One of them being ‘generalized anxiety disorder’. I was acutely reminded of that this morning.
Yesterday I came home from work with lingering anxiety. Some things there had stirred it up. I spent the evening knitting and reading before finally going to sleep. Both activities that have proven to calm my anxiety in the past. But this morning, even after sleeping for nearly 12 hours, the anxiety remained.
Initially I thought it was still because of the triggers from my job. But then, as I stood in the kitchen spreading butter on toast, my mind wandered to my husband. He has an important meeting coming up next week. There’s nothing ominous or worrisome about it. Plus, it’s his meeting to attend, not mine. And still I got an intense surge of anxiety thinking about it. Almost as soon as I recognized that this was general anxiety and not related to my job as I had previously thought, tears crept loose. For a brief moment, I cried right there in the kitchen buttering my toast. I don’t know why I cried. I don’t know why today is a day that I have anxiety when I think about any random thing, but today is just one of those days. I get them every now and then.
Therapy has taught me how to cope with anxiety, but it hasn’t gotten rid of it. It’s not supposed to. That’s not the goal. The goal is to learn how to live with it and get through the moments when it kicks up.
In a few hours, Josh and I will be going to a baseball game for the minor league team our city has. We scored a couple of the last tickets for this 4th of July game. We haven’t been to a game in years and so we’re excited to go watch the game and the fireworks show afterwards. We’ll have grilled burgers and hot dogs before we go and it will be an all-around good way to spend our holiday off.
But with it there will be anxiety. Because mental illness isn’t rational. It doesn’t care that today is the start of a three-day weekend and I’m scheduled for a fun day with my husband. It showed up. It’s here for the party too. I don’t like it, but I don’t get a say in the matter. I just need to be patient with myself as I wait for it to depart my company. Hopefully I don’t have to wait too long.
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