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Friday, October 25, 2019

My Anxiety

My husband, bless his heart, said to me last night, "do you want to take Rey to Dollar Tree?"

Perfectly acceptable question. He was trying to help me alleviate the anxiety that was coursing through my body at the moment.

"Are you kidding me?! Do you know what can happen?", I frantically replied.

At that moment, all I could think about were the number of cars that could lose control and run into me, the inexperienced teenage driver who could slam into me because they weren't paying attention. I immediately thought about how someone could come in and rob the store while we were there. I thought about how if I let Rey go into a different aisle, I wouldn't be there to step in front of her to stop a bullet. I thought about what would happen if there was something wet in the aisle and I slipped and broke my leg, or worse my back or arm and it would make it very difficult to work. There was even the possibility that there would be a masked madman hiding near my garage when we went to get in the van.

I KNOW these things are extreme. I KNOW these things aren't very realistic. I KNOW that my fears were unrealistic, but that didn't stop them from coming. Knowing didn't stop my heart from racing and my blood pressure going up and my body feeling tense.

That's what my anxiety looks like a LOT of the time. I start sweating and can hear my heartbeat in my head. I can instantly picture mass chaos and disaster and trauma.

And then, my anxiety tells me how stupid I am for thinking those things. It tells me how ridiculous it is that I would even let my mind take me there. It tells me that I'm annoying to my husband because he was just trying to help. It tells me that I'm irrational.

This is MY generalized anxiety disorder. Panic creeping in out of nowhere for no real reason. It's in the season for me. G's panic tells her to go, go, go. Her anxiety makes her need to go to the store, need to be out of the house, need to be on the move.

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