Refusing to Let Anxiety Win

I've started multiple posts this semester for them to never get past the draft stage. Problem is, I don't take time to write, so I don't ever have time to finish a post all the way. That's changing though, which I'll discuss later in the post. Long story short, I have some time to write today, so I'm taking advantage of it.

Right now I'm struggling with almost crippling anxiety. By right now, I'm not talking this second, because my anxiety comes in waves and this second, I'm in a calm spot. But it'll come back. I'm not foolish enough to think it's gone. This anxiety is directly related to school. When school pressure mounts, my anxiety gets worse.

I've had a "I can't breathe and am hyperventilating" panic attack. Multiple times I've had attacks that have left me sobbing, just praying for someone, anyone, to come and help me. Most days I live with anxiety just under the surface, boiling there, ready to burst out the second anything starts to overwhelm me. Since my semester is very difficult, almost every day something overwhelms me. My anxiety ranges most days from moderate to severe with rare blessed mild days in the mix. This is a hard journey.

You know how I prayed for someone to find me? Well, it doesn't work that way. I'm having to face the reality that if I want help, I have to be proactive and get it. I can't depend on anyone saving me, so I have to save myself. If I need my husband, I have to go get him. He's a great husband, so if I need him, he makes time. But he can't magically from another room know that I'm having a really bad anxiety attack. If I want to talk with my mother-in-law, I have to go find her. I can't expect her to somehow know that in a completely different part of the house I'm sobbing with my feelings completely overwhelming me. I have to go get help. Much, much easier said than done. Last time I tried during a really bad attack, I made it as far as just inside the door to my husband's computer room. I couldn't bring myself one more step. Luckily I was crying loudly, so my husband heard, but it was terrible.

I'm doing other things to help me too. I've made a very detailed plan for how I'm going to deal with school. I have a specific number of hours I have to work on school each week. I broke it down to a minimum time each day. I have a place to record how much I've done in my amazing planner (which deserves a post of it's own). I can do more homework than that, but I can't do less. I even went further to break it down by class. Each class has a minimum time I have to spend on them each week. Again, I can spend more, but I can't spend less. This is because I was totally unbalanced in how I was spending my time which caused me to not do well on a test. I just didn't take the time for that class. Lesson learned.

To help myself feel like my life isn't just about school, to build happy things into my life, to give myself purpose and direction, I've added even more.

The first thing I added was one on one time with my nephews. I'd do it for all my nieces and nephews, but I only have 4 nephews who live close enough to make it work regularly. My sister in law is visiting with her kids, and I made sure to incorporate time for the oldest today so he gets to benefit too. So far during these one on one times, we've done an experiment to see what combination of things makes the best baking soda volcano, the milk and soap experiment, blown up ivory soap in the microwave, baked a cake, and and demonstrated how primary colors make secondary colors with food coloring and water. Some of those doubled up: I've only been doing this for three weeks with three nephews. It's a success.  They love it. I love it. That 1-2 hours of time with my nephews, not stressing about school, having fun, and helping them learn is so amazing. Yeah, it takes time away from school, but as my husband likes to point out, I'm not a machine. I can't work on school 12 hours a day and be happy.

Next (partially due to other reasons I don't have time for), I've put more focus into my voice lessons and started attending my church choir again. Music has a way of calming my soul. It fills me with peace. Plus, I get to become better at something I love. That is worth a lot.

The most recent addition is my personal development hours each week. Every day I don't have school, I have to do an hour of personal development. Since this semester I have three days a week without school, I broke it into three categories: writing, spiritual development, and a project that I'll go more into at a future date (I'm working on preliminaries now). It doesn't matter what I do during those three hours as long as they fit into those categories. You'll probably get more blog posts from me because I'll actually be writing regularly. Again, like my homework schedule, I can do MORE than the three hours, but it has to come after I've gotten my homework hours in. Then I can go crazy if I want. Just like my homework, there's a place in my planner to record how much I've done.

Oh, this addition started BEFORE my anxiety disorder began acting up, but it's definitely making a big difference right now too: I am getting life coaching sessions. One hour a week that I dedicate to working through my limiting beliefs, overcoming my negative programming, and conquering my bad habits. I could write a post just about what I've gotten out of that (maybe I will another time). It's been amazing. I think this is one of the biggest reasons that I didn't break before I implemented all the other things.

All of these combined have brought my anxiety down from being "I can't function in life" to "I'm really close to breaking, but I can manage most of the time". I'm hoping as I spend more time sticking to my schedule, working on my classes, working on family ties, working on my personal development, then I will be able to bring my anxiety down to at least "I definitely still have anxiety, but I can face each day without trepidation". Lower would be great, but I'll stick with something realistic for now.

If I didn't have bipolar disorder, my answer would be go to my psychiatrist and get on a daily anti-anxiety med. But most of the daily anti-anxiety medications are also anti-depressants and anti-depressants can mix with bipolar disorder in not so good ways, including severe mood swings. I'll talk to my psychiatrist about options, but I'm hesitant to try anything at this point. I can't handle crashing or going high right now. I'm barely surviving as is. Mild mood swings, I can deal with. Anything big, and I'm dropping classes. My anxiety is already causing me to consider that possibility (I talked with my amazing academic advisor and we worked out a backup plan in case my anxiety makes this semester too hard. I'll still be able to graduate on time!).

I'm doing everything in my power to fight this. As I told my advisor, I'm not going to let my anxiety control my life completely. Yeah, it makes a difference. So does my bipolar disorder. They're features of who I am at this point. I can't make them go away. I can manage symptoms, but at any point, they could come roaring back. So I'm going to press forward, every day, doing the things I can do, controlling the pieces of my life that are in my control, so I can succeed despite the hand I've been dealt.

I'm going to do this. The day will come when I have that bachelors degree hanging on my wall. The day will come when I have a real, full time job that can support a family. The day will come when I am a mom. Those are things that will happen because I'm going to fight for them. No matter what it takes, no matter where my disorders take me, I will succeed. Because I refuse to let my disorders ruin my life. I may not take the typical path: I already haven't. It may take longer than I want: it already has. I may not end up exactly where I expected: I'm already somewhere different than anticipated. But I can do this.

I'm capable, intelligent, and a hard worker.

I will succeed.