Well, it’s been a nice 6-8 weeks of feeling a whole lot calmer with my anxiety at a low level, but I knew it wouldn’t last forever. The last 2 weeks I’ve been feeling the anxiety showing it’s head again. I’m sure it has to do with the whole uncertainty of the world right now and the increase of COVID cases happening rather quickly locally. Add to it stress at home and work and it kinda piles on and adds up quickly.
Monday night it affected me such that I wasn’t able to fall asleep in my new usual 12-1 time and it was closer to 3am because I just couldn’t turn my brain off. Even my meditation wasn’t helping to drown it out like it usually does. That means I’d only be getting just over 4 hours of sleep before work and I typically need closer to at least 6 to be able to function properly. However, didn’t I wake in a panic attack with my heart racing, cold sweats and crying at 6:30 and couldn’t for the life of me fall back to sleep for the hour until my alarm was due to go off. I tried putting on another meditation but it just made me feel more anxious, so I turned it off and just mindlessly scrolled Facebook for a bit before I just decided to just get up and have a shower. All through the day I wasn’t been able to focus, my mind keeps wandering and I couldn’t sit still – my leg keeps bouncing furiously and I’m having to do all the deep breathing to keep myself from crying and breaking down at work. Taking more breaks than normal to walk the floor and help clean to keep from sitting still.
Before this hit me Monday night, my intention was to even see if I was home in time to play in the 3rd Heroclix Worlds Qualifier even that is happening Tuesday evening, but I know when my head is like this that I’ll never be able to focus enough and I wasn’t back from shopping in time anyways. Instead of playing, I ended up watching games instead and I’m grateful for that distraction. I could feel myself getting tired in the last round but do you think I could fall asleep when it was done? Nope. I struggled with falling asleep again. I put on a meditation again and I’m glad I chose one that was 2 hours long because it took me close to that amount of time before I actually passed out. Racing thoughts sure are hard to push out of your head. They weren’t even coherent thoughts that I could label and try to either rationalize or tell myself that there was nothing I could do about it in that moment and it would still be there to deal with tomorrow. I hate when it’s more a feeling of racing thoughts vs actual thoughts.
Wednesday I woke again not rested and with that feeling of anxiety with my butterflies and racing thoughts again. At least I stayed asleep until the alarm went off though. I was really hoping that I’d be able to use my techniques to get it to a manageable level again and pull myself out of it, but here we are going into day 3 of it straight. My next therapy appointment is still 3 weeks away because we’ve been doing monthly sessions, but if I can’t get myself settled in the next few days, I think I’ll be reaching out to schedule an appointment sooner.
Thankfully, my sleep regulated back to being good again, but not the anxiety. That’s been hanging around since and I just can’t shake it. I can feel myself feeling a little low as well and not having the motivation to get much done outside of work. I almost reached out to book a sooner therapy appointment, but decided against it as we’ve been meeting Tuesday nights and I have a dentist appointment booked after work for Tuesday this week, so waiting one more week for the appointment as scheduled.
While I was at work Friday, it was announced that Toronto is going back to a modified stage 2 for certain sectors and mine job is included in the shutdowns. I’m waiting to hear from work for what that means for me again. I’m sure that it’s likely that I’ll get a few extra days of work to put that last payroll in again and finish up paperwork for October – as it was announced this shutdown would be for 28 days – my guess is it’ll be longer, but we know it’s minimum 4 weeks and that means balancing everything for October for sure.
I’m hoping that my mental health won’t get as bad as it got last time I was off work at the beginning of the pandemic. I’m going to make a point of going for walks and doing bits around the house as way to keep myself moving and doing things. I will probably book therapy more than monthly again too for the next appointment.
This last weekend was both Thanksgiving and ROC Online Worlds. I will be writing up my tournament report again for Worlds – so look for that coming in the next few days. We had a quiet Thanksgiving at home with just my son, brother and I. We all threw in on splurging on a prime rib roast that my brother cooked wonderfully along with cauliflower, sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes with pumpkin pie for dessert.
So basically back to focusing on helping my mental health again around here, but that’s about it in my world for the last 2 weeks.
Until next time, xoxo