Tag Archives: anxiety

A Pre-Covid Journal Entry

June 2, 2024mental healthadhd, anxiety, billy joel, blog, brenda and eddie, cat mom, fiction, grocery shopping, head music, ice cream, journal entries, journaling, life, life with teens, meow, my life, nonfiction, panic, parenting, ringing in the ears, scenes from an italian restaurant, short-story, silence, undiagnosed adhd, writingDebby Quick

I decided to share some of my pre-book writing journaling with my daughter the other day. I was surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did, and she was quiet as I read. I guess maybe I started writing earlier than I thought I did! I may share more as the weeks go by. I hope you enjoy an evening (or, like, 10 minutes) of my life about four years ago!

The clock on the couch side table read 6:00. But that clock had stopped years ago, before I even moved into the house. It was a stylish analog clock and went with the decor. The light was fading outside the window.I could see the rays of early autumn light through the reddening leaves. So it must have been about 6:00. But where was everyone? The house was so quiet. I was used to activity. Endless sound and movement. The feeling of needing to escape into my own mind to avoid the overload. Going into my room and burying my face in pillows to block out the noise, but noise would seep beneath the hastily closed door. There was the fear of being followed into my room, which usually occurred, and could not be ignored. I was never alone. I was never free with my thoughts. The music never stopped. That day it was a Billy Joel song from my childhood, not even a popular song, maybe a B side I heard from my mother’s turntable while I was counting cars driving by in front of my house. From my favorite perch, the radiator under the window in the living room. “Brenda and Eddie were the popular steady/and the king and the queen of the prom….” But I didn’t know why it was repeating with annoying clarity and regularity in my head that week. I had narrowed it down to boredom or under treated, free flowing anxiety. I took a deep breath and held it for 3 seconds. Exhaled.

Where were they? I had gotten home at 5:30 after walking home from the bus stop. I recalled the one time I came home to an empty house that smelled of fresh baked cookies. It was 6 years ago. The Tollhouse cookies were cooling on the rack, no baker in sight. It was surreal at the time. They never went anywhere. They were always about to sit down to dinner. I couldn’t remember where it was they went, probably to the grocery store to get some ingredients for dinner that night. There were never enough ingredients. Which I always found strange, since there were so many trips to the grocery store. But somehow we always needed more groceries. The cookies were fantastic that day. There were no cookies this time.

I knew I should take advantage of the silence but I had no idea what would fill the minutes until their return. Reading was always good. There were so many books to start. There was the dog eared mystery in my purse that I had been reading on the way home on the bus. It was a new author to me, and most likely it would be the last of her books I would read. It didn’t grab me. I really didn’t care who killed the guy. I just wasn’t invested. So what to read, what to read. I thought of turning on the tv, but there was no way to avoid the news, no matter how fast I flipped the channels. No more politics. It was too much. But now it’s taboo to not do politics. Not being involved was being complicit. But how much anxiety was one expected to ingest in the span of a day? Was feeling sick to one’s stomach from morning until night mandatory? Being scared of one’s future the new carrying card of today’s liberal? I was not in a place to fight Nazis that night. I would don my armor tomorrow and fight the good fight then.

I thought of the possibilities as I stretched my legs across the couch, often occupied by long, adolescent legs in repose. It seemed like a luxury to have so much room. My shoulders not squashed on both sides by hot sweaty bodies, my legs not trapped in pretzel form by a cat who chooses to jump on board just as I tuck my knees and feet beneath me, as if my lap was a safety post from the volcanic lava that made up the floor. Where were the cats? Why did they not approach when I first came in the door, looking to rub their furry hides against my shins in an act of reownership as they did each day? The house suddenly seemed that much more empty.

I closed my eyes. My ears were ringing. Most likely a result from hours on the phone at work, fixing problems and navigating dilemmas. My mother would say the buzzing in the ears was caused from taking too much Ibuprofen. She had read an article about this. I listened to the hum, to see if there was a pattern, a song, some sort of code. It was a constant, high toned drone. It soon lost its appeal. Maybe music would help, but the music…it was not doing its job properly. C’mon Brenda and Eddie!

A small sound pulled me out of my reverie and my eyes popped open. A scraping sound. From the bedroom. I went to investigate. As I entered, I could make out a soft mewling from the closet. I cracked the door. I was rushed by two angry, most likely hungry felines. Well, that mystery solved. Cats locked in the closet. But why? How? How long? Who locked them in there? When would they be home?

It was probably nothing. Maybe they went for a walk. No. She would never agree to that. It took actual effort for her to move one foot in front of the other. It took energy. It took some kind of kick in the butt. They were not on a walk. The mall? No, not together. That would cause a family scandal that would not be lived down for days. Out for ice cream? Unimaginable without waiting for me. Ice cream is my love, my muse, my heart and soul. Anyone found out to pursue ice cream without me would be given the gaze of death long after the offence had passed. Play date? She told me she had no friends, and she was too old to call them playdates. She had friends. It was an exaggeration, a play for pity, and possibly for offers of gifts of sympathy. Or maybe a ply to get money for shopping.

The clock still said 6:00. But it wasn’t really. It felt as if hours had passed, or maybe only 5 minutes. The thoughts in an ADHD mind tend to compress and unzip all at once, days of information in a 30 second period. It always amazed me when it was not midnight at 8pm, or bedtime at 5. But some things are expected at certain times. Family being home to greet me, dinner almost ready. The unpredictable in a predictable setting. I was not expecting it.

I walked out of the bedroom as the front door opened. Our car was silent, a Prius, with a stealth engine that did not even alert bicycle riders that we crept up behind them, so they tended not to pull to the side. I had suggested a bike horn outside the driver’s side window to alert them, but as of yet it had not materialized. So I had not heard them pull in.

“Where were you?’ I asked, keeping my tone cool and carefree.

“Grocery store,” he replied. “I needed to get some things for dinner. We were also out of cereal for tomorrow morning.”

I sighed. This was a mixed blessing. The irritation of the everyday, along with the predictability of life under my roof. It was at once reassuring and annoying. I sat back down on the couch. She approached, told me to move over, plopped down with her iPad and headphones, and threw her legs across my lap. The cat jumped on my lap.

“We got you some ice cream,” she said, not making eye contact, putting on her headphones.

Happy Thanksgiving!-Anniversary

November 19, 2023holidays, I Just Can't Say I Love You, massachusetts, May I Have Your Attention Please, McKinney High Class of 1986, Uncategorized80s proms, adhd, anxiety, Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, book series, Carl, coming of age, covid, dreams, fiction, fomo, gen x, hats, home office, I Just Can't Say I Love You, james, jean-luc picard, Kim, knitting, May I Have Your Attention Please, new series, private school, proms, public school, retro 80s, romance, Sally, Sally and James, series, star trek, thanksgiving, wfh, writing, young adultDebby Quick

Happy Thanksgiving to my not-IRL friends! This is also a big anniversary for me. It was two years ago this November that I had the dream that led me to start to write my first book. It was a vivid dream, one I can still see in my head if I concentrate hard enough. I was back in school, and it was high school. But it wasn’t my high school. I was at the public high school in my hometown. Somehow or other, I had ended up back at public high school after a year at private school. I was in the cafeteria, and I had finished my lunch. I was dumping my trash in the garbage can, when suddenly a boy I had not seen since I was in junior high approached me and asked me if it hurt. When I inquired about what would be hurting, he answered with a crooked smile, “when you fell from heaven.” In my dream, that pickup line led to a whirlwind relationship, and I got flashes of the next two years and how wonderful it was. I was so happy that I had gone back to public school. The dream was heading for happily ever after, when suddenly, a voice over spoke. “But none of this ever happened,” it said in a flowery but professional female voice, “because someone was out sick that day and the two never met by the garbage cans.

I don’t know if any Star Trek fans read my blog, but if so, do you remember the classic Next Generation episode where Jean-Luc Picard gets zapped by an alien probe, and ends up living decades on a strange planet, including having a wife, children, and grandchildren, and even learning how to play the flute, until he was a very old man, and he was returned to his ship, only to find that only 25 minutes had passed? Yeah, that’s kind of how it felt for me when I woke up from this dream. It had seemed so real, so vivid, that I had to sit there for a minute and remind myself that I graduated from high school, and not a public one, 35 years earlier! I was a bit disoriented, and couldn’t stop thinking about the dream for days.

It wasn’t the content of the dream so much, but the feelings it brought. I felt like I had missed something. There have been several times over the years when I have wondered what my life would have been like if I had gone to public school. Who would I have been friends with? The same people from junior high, or some other people from other junior highs that all converged on the same high school? Would I have met some new boy in high school, and would we have hit it off? Maybe whoever he was, he was at a private school somewhere thinking the same thing as me, about what it would have been like if things had gone differently.

I could have let it go right there, but actually, I couldn’t. I was anxious. We had just started with the Omicron variant of COVID, and things were not looking up with the world at that moment. I was stuck at home, working a job that I felt I could perform better with in-person collaboration, especially with my ADHD. I was craving change, something different. My family was doing the best they could. My poor daughter was stuck doing on-line school, which was not the best plan for her, and my retired husband was trying to keep the house together and also respect my need for quiet and confidentiality while I worked. Poor guy. And there I was, sitting in my tiny little home office, which was more like a glorified closet with windows on the far side of our bedroom. With a desk and a bookshelf in there, there was barely room to push back my chair, and my bed was two feet away, reminding me every moment that I was not in the office, and I had just crawled out of the covers right there only hours before, and would return there later that night. I HATED working from home. And there was no end in sight.

I mentioned before that I had been knitting, and I ended up completing 42 hats. That’s a lot of hats. They were in piles on a table near the front door, and my husband kept asking me what I was going to do with them. They kept falling over. I had no idea what to do with them. But then, the dream. I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream. The feelings. The not knowing. It was pushing at my brain. So one day, I decided to do something about it.

I started to write it down. I created some people. There was the girl, Sally, who had left her friends and gone to private school, to find her way, and see if it was a better fit for her than private school. Her parents had given her a choice, and she had decided. Then there was James. James was slightly troubled. He had difficulty with focus, and a brother with lots of problems. James represented the unknown to Sally. I had to give them a slight back story, so I did. They were acquainted in junior high, but he was a bad boy, and she was, uh, well, she hadn’t figured out what she was yet at the time. But somehow, she had some kind of connection with the bad boys.

And that’s where reality ended. When Sally meets James again in the hallway of McKinney High on the first day of school, every bit of that book becomes fiction. Sally and James set the stage and told me what needed to happen. Characters do that. They tell you about themselves, and when you put them together, they tell you what they are like together. You can write something else, but it won’t work. There is a chemistry, and if your characters have it, you have to go with it. You. Have. No. Choice. But I’m glad. Because Sally and James’s chemistry worked. It worked well for them, and for me. And the next thing you know, there’s a really long story about Sally and James. And my dream is satisfied.

The only problem, of course, is that once May I Have Your Attention Please was completed, Sally and James told me something else, something new, something unexpected. Their story was over, sort of, but there were lots of other stories to tell, and I already knew the characters. They were Sally and James’s friends, the ones that supported them, and helped them to make it all happen. They all had stories. And I had to tell them.

So I did. I wrote six more books in the series, each of them featuring supportive characters that were present in the hotel room on the night of junior prom. Junior prom. Something I didn’t go to, but Sally did. And it was the most wonderful time of her young life. I’m happy for Sally. And for James. They had it easy, and they found love.

As the series progresses, things are not so easy for all of the other characters. Kim and Carl have a tough time getting it together in Book 2, I Just Can’t Say I Love You. And some of the other characters don’t even end up with who they started with, as you will see in Book 3, coming in February. In Book 4, our female lead doesn’t even really have a high school boyfriend, and in Book 5, the female lead has more than one, but is not who we thought she was. Books 6 and 7 will surprise you, and if you’re anything like me, they’ll make you cry just a little.

I am now working on another series, which is in the same time period, but not featuring our McKinney High friends. They are there in some of the books as minor characters, but this series introduces you to new players, and new settings, including New York, Delaware, and Colorado (Eastboro is still in there, though. I love Eastboro). I’m on book 7 of 7 now, so I’m about to have to figure out what I’m doing next. I might leave the 1980s and Eastboro all together, and maybe try a completely different genre. Maybe add some magical touches. Only time, and my imagination, will tell.

Here again are the links to my Facebook page, Debby Meltzer Quick Author, TikTok, @dbmquick and Instagram, quickdebby_author. Please follow me on these pages. And please explore my page here at debbymeltzerquickauthor.com.

Enjoy your holiday that has nothing to do with turkeys, and make the most of being with your family, whether the one you were assigned at birth, or the one you have chosen for yourself.

Stress. It’s What’s For Dinner

July 2, 2023mental healthadaptive coping skills, antidepressants, anxiety, coping skills, deprevation, diet culture, food obsession, invalidation, knitting, knitting hats, maladaptive coping skills, self care, SSRIs, stress, stress eating, stress relief, substance use, validation, writingDebby Quick

Ok, maybe not dinner. But it does fill you up. When you have a huge plateful of stress, you swallow down your bitter entree, and follow it up with a glass of citric acid. Welcome, reflux.

So we all have coping skills that help us get through stress. There are healthy coping skills, and those that are not quite so healthy. In the mental health world, we call this adaptive and maladaptive. Both can be very effective. You might say, “but Debby, how can unhealthy, maladaptive coping skills be effective?” That would be a very good question. The answer is that they help us to get our needs met. The downside of that is that after using the maladaptive coping skills, there are usually unwelcome consequences.

Let me give an example. So imagine that you’re a child, living in a home where things are unpredictable. Maybe your parents fight about stupid things, and you never know what will trigger an argument. Maybe one of your parents is addicted to alcohol or drugs, and can be very unpredictable. You don’t know if you are safe at home. This might go on for years, and you just live with a sick feeling in your stomach. But then one day, someone offers you a drink, or a hit, or some other means of numbing your emotions. You accept, and then all of the sudden, things don’t seem so bad. So you continue to utilize mind numbing substances any time things aren’t going right. Now, it’s twenty years later, you’re married, you have kids, and things are stressful. Something happens and you feel you can’t handle the emotions. So you go to a bar. Or you call a friend who can hook you up. You get drunk, or you get high. And then you feel better. Maybe you can even go home and you’re feeling calm, and things settle down and you feel great because you just made things better for your kids. Better than it was when you were a kid. You’ve used a maladaptive coping skill. And it worked. But it only worked for a while. Because you know that next time something feels bad, you’re going to head for the same solution. And that’s gonna come back and bite you.

Now imagine that you live in a home where your parents are so wrapped up in their own issues that they pretty much don’t even notice you. They’re using drugs, or they’re stressed out about their own problems, or they have a chronic illness of some sort. You pretty much have to take care of yourself. But then a time comes where you need something, and you can’t take care of it on your own. No one hears you when you ask for help. You try everything you know in order to get them to listen, but nothing that you’ve tried has worked. So you have a gigantic tantrum, scream and yell, knock things over, and now, suddenly, you have everyone’s attention. And you’ve learned something important. When you freak out and lose control, people listen to you, and your needs get met. Now, it’s twenty years later (see how quickly time goes by?) and you’re trying to succeed in your own romantic situation. Everything is going well until one day when there is something you want and you’re not getting it. Suddenly, your subconscious mind remembers that in order to get what you want, you need to make a gigantic fuss. So you skip right over all of the healthy means of letting someone know you need something, and go right for the tantrum. Your partner is shocked by your behavior; it’s the first time they’ve ever seen you act like this. And they respond. They give you what it is you need, to try to help you calm down. Your need was met. But then, it happens again, a month later. And this time, your partner looks at you with confusion and frustration, asking themselves, “what the heck is going on here?” and maybe they start questioning the logic of being with you. Now, the coping skill is no longer working for you, and now, probably, your relationship fails.

Photo by SHVETS production on Pexels.com

Maladaptive coping skills are formed in childhood. They are necessary for children who don’t have the opportunity to learn healthy skills from their environment. Either there are parents or caregivers that don’t validate emotions in a healthy way, or maybe they are just not able to meet the special needs of the child for some reason. It’s not clear if this is a nature or nurture situation. I suspect it’s a bit of both. So a child learns these skills,and it helps them to get by. In a way, this is a positive thing, as it’s a survival technique. But just like everyone else, this child will grow up and have to be on their own in the world, probably having to get a job and engage with other people. And other people are not always thrilled to have to deal with their behavior. So it’s important for these now adult children to learn skills that work for them, or those around them. Adaptive skills.

I had awesome, validating parents. That’s not to say that they were perfect. Parents are doing the best that they can, and sometimes their best depends on their own coping skills. I know my parents did their best, and I love them for it. But I was a very sensitive kid. I cried at the drop of a hat. I was prone to injury, including two broken arms by the time I was in fifth grade. I didn’t respond well to teasing, and I had two older brothers; not a good match! And to top it all off, I had undiagnosed ADHD, which made it very difficult for me to relate to many of my peers. When the time came for us to kind of break up into groups of friends, or cliques, in about third grade, I had no idea what to do. None of it made sense to me. I didn’t know how to initiate conversations, or to converse in a crowd. I was a one on one kind of friend. So I found myself starting to be on the outside of the circle. The strange thing was, I wanted people to like me so much, but I think I walked around with a big sign on my forehead that said “I’m really not interested.” I was focused on wanting people to like me, but I never once considered whether or not I liked them. But somehow, I conveyed a message to others to pretty much stay clear. And in addition to that, I was awkward, and most of the time, I said the wrong thing. I spend a good deal of my childhood palming my forehead and asking myself why I just said the dumb thing I said.

So I had to develop some coping skills to deal with my emotions. My emotions left me feeling empty, so of course when you’re feeling empty, you want to fill yourself up. And what better to fill yourself up with, than food. Lots of food. Lots of sugary, delicious, comfort food. Oreos. Ice cream. Chicken McNuggets. If it was food and it was yummy, I ate it. Now, if you are much younger than me, you might not know this, but it was very common in the late 1970s and early 1980s for mothers to put their daughters on diets if they have gained “a little” weight. And I had. Now when I look back, so had everyone else. It was pretty normal to fill out quickly later in elementary school. Your body is changing, and shifting around. Hormones are arriving on the express train. But the medical community had decided that young girls needed to be thin to be healthy in those days, and doctors were putting out books to tell mothers how to help their daughters. So I was put on a diet. And I didn’t like it. So I snuck food to make up for it. Think about it; I was using food as my coping skill, and now I was being told I could no longer do it. So I had to cope with all of my regular stressors in life, plus the stressor that I was being deprived of what helped me to cope. It was a swirling eddy of disaster.

Photo by Darina Belonogova on Pexels.com

Sneaking food became the norm for me. I felt ashamed if I was seen eating too many sweets, or if my portions were too big. Let me make this very clear: this shame was put on me by me, no one else. Well, maybe, the diet culture helped a bit. So I would sneak food, feel bad about it, and then eat more. I thinned out quite a bit as I grew, but always saw that chubby girl every time I looked in the mirror, and I felt bad.

I won’t go into the coping skills I learned in college, because they’re not relevant here, but they were clearly maladaptive, caused by feelings of deprivation, and caused a lot more problems than they solved. Cut to my mid-twenties, and I finally learned about SSRIs, the magic happy pills, and seriously, one month into taking Paxil, I stopped obsessing over food. But that doesn’t mean all my problems went away.

I have had many other coping skills over the years, some helpful, some not so much. I love to read. I make sure I have time to read every day. I like comedy, so I make sure to watch funny sitcoms on TV, sometimes the same ones over and over, because I also thrive on repetition. I enjoy going for walks. I like cats. I like to spend time with my friends. I took up knitting, and started to make hats. I love watching baseball and football, and when I go home to Massachusetts, I usually try to make it to Fenway park to a Red Sox game. And I really love to write.

Writing became my main coping skills during the last year of COVID. I have always loved to write. I wrote poems in high school, and also some interesting novel-type things. In college, I journaled and wrote poems, mostly dark ones. In my 20s, I took some classes in fiction writing, and I started a novel. I was almost done with the darn novel, and it was pretty good, but then I got pregnant, and lost all sense of creativity and gave up for some time. That was 18 years ago. So when I started to feel extreme anxiety 18 months ago because we were told that COVID once again had spiked, and it was unlikely that we would be able to return to in-person activities for several more months, first I turned to knitting hats. I literally knitted 42 hats, I am not kidding. But then that novelty wore off, and I turned to writing. It helped a lot. I got so much out of my brain that had been swirling around for months, even years, and I was hooked. In 18 months, I have completed 9 complete manuscripts, have published one, and one is now at the editor. I finished book 9 two days ago.

So my coping skill is awesome. I love to write. I love to see the results of my writing. I love when someone reads my book(s) and tells me that they loved it/them. I love that I have 20 positive reviews on Amazon. I love to come up with new ideas. But as I said, I just finished a book. It’s been two days. I am trying to take a break from writing, just to rest. And guess what’s happening? I’m feeling really stressed out. I feel compelled to write, but I’m not ready to start again. I’m sitting here right now writing this blog, so I can write. So I don’t feel the stress for a few minutes. But then the post will be done, and I’ll have some time on my hands. I could go eat some ice cream. It would be okay. I can eat ice cream. That doesn’t freak me out so much anymore. But maybe I’ll go for a walk. Maybe I’ll knit a hat. Maybe there’s a Red Sox game on TV. Or maybe I’ll just let myself sit in my stress and anxiety for a while, and see what that feels like. I will not resort to old habits that don’t work for me anymore, because those just cause new problems. But every now and then it’s good to look back on those and remember, and see how far I’ve come. We all have stress. It’s just a matter of how we deal with it.

“May I Have Your Attention Please” is available now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere that eBooks are sold. Please check it out, and if you do read my book, please leave a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, or whatever other platform you are using. It would mean a whole lot!

I Just Can’t Say I Love You will be available on September 15, 2023, staring Carl and Kim and the usual cast of characters.

Anxiety

February 11, 2023mental healthalternative medicine, anxiety, breathing, covid anxiety, get nervous, getting help, james, just breathe, knitting, May I Have Your Attention Please, pat benatar, psychiatric care, relaxation, Sally, Sally and James, therapist, therapy, things that help, writingDebby Quick

I’ve mentioned before that I feature a lot of 1980s music in my first book, “May I Have Your Attention Please.” Only back then, we didn’t call it 80s music. We just called it music. One of the songs that I mention is “Anxiety (Get Nervous)” by Pat Benatar. I had the album Get Nervous, which came out in 1982 and was awesome. It was part of the stack of albums on my record player that I listened to as I went to sleep. In retrospect, it might not have been the greatest thing to listen to before going to sleep: a woman saying “get nervous” over and over again. Maybe that explains all the nightmares! I didn’t know it at the time, but later, much later, I would be diagnoses with having generalized anxiety disorder and ADHD, which is also on the anxiety disorder spectrum, and these disorders were most likely the cause of most my childhood and early adulthood distress. That’s why it’s really easy for me to write about people dealing with anxiety. I have witnessed it both first and second hand. I have treated people with anxiety through therapy. Also, it runs in my family, and since I’m in my family, here I am.

I tend to inflict a bit of anxiety in the lives of my characters. In my first book, not as much, but in the next five, there is quite a bit. I also do a lot to try to eventually alleviate that anxiety, because in doing so, I help myself deal with my own fears and phobias! So I’ll share a couple of little tidbits of anxiety provoking situations that my characters go through. Remember, what causes anxiety for one person could be nothing for someone else. Think about it. Some people keep spiders for pets. Others would prefer to burn the house down if they found a single spider in their bedroom. I’m right in the middle, but I have to admit, I had a nightmare the other night about a spider, and it was 20 inches in diameter. I actually screamed out in my sleep and my partner had to wake me up! But most spiders don’t phase me. I just don’t want them crawling on my face while I sleep. So here is a small tidbit of anxiety that James and Sally are feeling during an interaction involving meeting family:

“James was feeling relieved that Sally had rescued him from the situation. He didn’t want to open the college can of worms with Sally’s grandfather. He had enough to worry about with his own family. Maybe the grandfathers were the reason that Sally was feeling so uptight about him meeting her grandparents. If so, he thought he may have passed the test.”

And here is how Sally feels after having a very disturbing encounter with a school bully:

“Sally tried to speak, but she couldn’t catch her breath. Michelle sat against the wall and put her arm around her shoulders. She sat with her like that until Sally’s chest stopped heaving. Sally took a few deep breaths and recounted the whole story to Michelle.”

As you can see, anxiety can affect not only your thoughts, but also what’s occurring in your body. For me, sometimes, I feel my heart pounding, and I am very aware of it. I might not even be thinking about something that makes me feel anxious, but just the fact that I feel like an organ is about to burst through my chest can make those thoughts accelerate. So when it happens, I start to perseverate over what it might be that is causing the physical symptoms. Could it be that there is something wrong with me physically? Could I be having some sort of heart event? Should I be more worried? Oh no, now I AM more worried! Or maybe, it’s just anxiety about something that I can’t recall. So what could it be? Then I come up with all sorts of scenarios, and pretty soon, my thoughts of anxiety are matching the sensations in my body.

Do you want to know what the weirdest thing it about all of this? I’m a therapist, and about 9 years ago, I taught a group about how to deal with anxiety. I know everything I’m supposed to do to counter anxiety. I know the tricks of the trade. So of course, the moment I feel anxiety, I just use all the coping skills that I used to teach my clients, right? Uh, more like, what coping skills? Oh, those are fine for everyone else, but they don’t work for me! Ha! It’s amazing how that happens. Once, I went to see a therapist in an Employee Assistance Program to talk about my anxiety. She ended up giving me a hand-out of some information about coping with anxiety, and guess what? It was the same stuff that I gave out in my group! I pretty much assumed that this woman couldn’t help me, because I already knew everything she knew. I was stupid.

But it is really hard when you treat people for something, and then you have to deal with it yourself. I think there is embarrassment and shame about it, as you think you should be able to handle this on your own, and sometimes you can’t. That happened to me last year, around the time that the Omicron variant of COVID had been identified, and all of the restrictions that had been lifted were suddenly back in place. My work had been giving approximate “return to work” dates for months, and finally the date was getting closer. But then, there was the announcement. We weren’t going to return to work, and they weren’t even going to project when the return was going to occur. I had been holding my own until that time, but one thing that you must understand is that I DETEST working from home. I do not do well when left to my own devices. I am not a self-starter. I do best when working among other people who are doing similar work. So I was really looking forward to returning to the office. So when that didn’t happen, and it looked like the pandemic was going to last until who knew when, I pretty much lost it. My stomach started to hurt. I lost my appetite. I lost my motivation. Things started to look blurry. I started to misunderstand the intention of others. I was getting hot and cold flashes. My heart was pounding, and I felt dizzy. And every day it got worse, not better. And it went on all day and night. Speaking of night, I stopped sleeping. And when I did sleep, it was not good. I thought up all sorts of reasons why this was happening. Menopause. I only have half a thyroid, so I was positive it was my thyroid meds. My migraine shots. Some sort of heart disorder. Anything and everything. I called my doctor. I had tests run. I went over my symptoms a thousand times. I was in Urgent Care twice in two days. I made medication changes. I did everything I could.

Finally, I was told that I was most likely “just” dealing with anxiety. I was resistant. If it was anxiety, I would have to do some work to make it better, and that sounded a lot harder than tapering off of medications (in retrospect, it’s not harder. Tapering off medications is very hard and can cause a new set of problems). But long story short (too late, I know) I did get help from professionals, and now, a bit over a year later, I am much better, I have tons of hope for the future, I am back in the office 3 days a week (still not enough, but no one comes in on Mondays and Fridays), I have knitted 42 hats, and written 6 complete books. And yes, the hats and the writing were crucial in my recovery. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t figured these things out.

Here are some other things I do to help with my anxiety, and I have encouraged others to do:

count to ten
Breathe. I mean, really breath. Become aware of your breath. Inhale through your nose. Feel the air going into your belly. Exhale. Count your breaths. Count how long your inhale and exhale last. Be aware of your breath. Breathe whenever you need to.
Change your surroundings. Go outside. Drive somewhere else. Go someplace that feels safe. Go to people who feel safe.
Move your body. When you go outside, move your body around the block. If you like to run, run. If you like to walk, put one foot in front of the other. If you have stationary equipment, jump on. Do it for seven minutes. Don’t push it. Just move. Tomorrow it will be easier, and you can do it longer.
Meditate. This one is the hardest for me, as I drift away from my focus and have to come back to my breath about once every 30 seconds. But it is the practice that is important. If you cannot meditate on your own, you can find videos on You Tube. Or take a class.
Yoga. It slows you down and makes you breathe. And move. You can go to class or use a video, or whatever practice works for you.
Keep a routine. Do the same things in a predictable manner. Go to bed at the same time every night. Get up at the same time every morning. Eat 3 meals a day. Maybe eat the same meals every day if they bring you comfort.
Do things you enjoy and that don’t take a lot of deep thought. It might be reading a book, writing a book, knitting hats, doing crafts, watching “The Big Bang Theory” over and over again until your family goes crazy, or something completely different. Painting, playing solitaire (with real cards or on the computer), going hiking, taking a train ride, building something out of wood. The list goes on and on. And make yourself do what you enjoy for a set amount of time every day. No matter what else is going on around you.
Alternative medicine: acupuncture, massage, chiropractic care, naturopathic medicine. Herbal remedies, but only as recommended or okayed by a professional to make sure there are no interactions with other meds.
Decrease sugar. I have found that this helps me a lot. The less sugar I eat, the less my heart pounds, and that’s a good thing. Sugar increases inflammation, which can cause all sorts of issues. I am not saying to cut it out completely. Just lower it and see if it helps. Give it several days.
Talk to your support people. Let them know what is going on, and what you need them to do to help you. Sometimes, you just need a hug, or maybe someone to take care of your pets (scoop the cat box) on the days that you cannot. Maybe someone can come sit with you and watch tv. Or maybe they can take you out. Also let them know your boundaries. Maybe now is not the best time for people to come to you for support. Not now, but soon.
Talk to your doctor. Rule out anything medical that might be going on. Never ignore chest pain. If anything feels different from what you are used to, get it checked out. My father had panic attacks, but he also had a heart condition. Ignoring the signs and symptoms can be dangerous. And if your doctor can’t find anything wrong, they can refer you to someone else who might be able to help you, such as:
A therapist. I am a therapist, so I think therapy is great. But I’ve also been to see therapists, and I can tell you from both sides, therapy helps. If you have had a different experience, it might not be the therapy; it might have just been the wrong therapist for you. Give it another chance. Sometimes, you can find the root of the problem. But if not, you can still come up with a personalized plan to help deal with the anxiety. There is not a one size fits all solution to any mental health issue. Googling might give you information, but Google can’t get to know you the way a therapist can.
See a psychiatrist. If your doctor does not want to prescribe medication for you, as some primary care providers do not feel comfortable doing this, have them refer you to a specialist. When I say psychiatrist, I really mean anyone who is authorized to prescribe psychiatric medication. That includes psychiatric nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants. They are also fantastic and know what to do. Just don’t expect any miracle drug. If a medication makes you feel better on the first day, I can promise you that it is not something that you will be allowed to take long term. The effects wear off over time, and you will just have to take more and more. And then, someday, you’ll be taken off of the med, and it will not be a good experience for you. Or anyone around you. So be patient. As patient as you can be with anxiety! But seriously, sometimes, you need medication. Maybe just for a short time, or maybe longer. Remember, it’s just like any other medical condition. If you had Type 1 diabetes, no one would fault you for taking insulin for your health. It’s the same way for mental health medications. They are there, and they can help. They can’t fix everything, but they can take the edge off for sure.

I hope that some of this information is helpful to some of you. I know that it’s hard to talk about mental health in public. But I think the more we do it, the less of a stigma it will be to share our stories. I know it helps me to talk to others with similar experiences. Last year, I was referred to an ADHD group through my insurance, and it was great. I learned so much, and it really helped me. That, along with the help of my professional team, my family, my friends, medication, and time, really brought me back to myself, a place where last year, I could never see myself again. Someone told me last year, “Next year, you’ll look back at this, and you won’t be able to believe that you were even feeling like this, and you’ll feel so good to know that it’s over and you feel good.” I didn’t believe them at the time, but just last week, I found myself doing just that, and the only thing I could say to myself was “Wow. Just wow.”

Here again are the links to my Facebook page, Debby Meltzer Quick Author, and TikTok, @dbmquick. Please follow me on these pages. And please explore my page here at debbymeltzerquickauthor.com.

Have a great week, my friends. And don’t forget to breathe!