anxiety, Identity, Living, May is Mental Health Month, Mental Health, postpartum depression

The Blue Chicken or the Anxiety Egg?

Which came first?

It’s the proverbial question.

Did my anxiety beget my depression? Or am I worried how things will turn out because of my depression?

Worry-wort. My own worst enemy. Always running things through my head. So sensitive. Beating a dead horse. All of these are terms used to describe me at one time or another.

I do have a tendency to perseverate. I can’t let things go. I worry them like a dog with a bone that is impervious to bite marks. It’s not productive. It’s not reassuring. It’s a form of torment actually.

In college, after my roommate had left for the weekend, I would lie on my top bunk and stare out the window, wondering why I couldn’t go out and round up new friends as easily as everyone else seemed to be doing. I would watch the sun set, thinking how alone I was.

As August neared its end one year, I bought a thin volume entitled, Why Are You Worrying? As the cashier plugged my purchase into the register, he asked, “Are you a teacher?’ He said he’d bought the same book at the start of a school year once too. While he may have bought the book for the same reasons I did, no self-help book could help me turn off the worry. I triangulated every possible scenario in the classroom; how I would put out fires, cut off conflicts at the knees before they stood up, squash rebellion before it started. But you can’t plan for every permutation. The very nature of education is the X factor.

And this nervous nature – is that what plunged me into depression when life became so overwhelming as a mother of three? I couldn’t control anything, didn’t understand and couldn’t fix the feelings I was having, and felt really crappy as a result.

Or is it viewing life through the dark glasses of depression that makes me see the shadows of worry in every corner?

It’s all tumbled together in the dryer at the highest setting anyway.

The only ‘good’ thing about all of it is that what I thought was a flaw on my part, a weakness, an inability to achieve, connect, push myself, believe in myself, is really anxiety. I’m not this wimpy, pathetic, sad sack. I have an excuse! A reason, a rationalization, a disease. Good for me!

So chicken or egg – it’s all part of the cycle of life. All I can do is try not to get scrambled.

anxiety, Living, May is Mental Health Month, Mental Health

Self-Aware

Has a massage ever brought you to tears?

Tears that spring out of nowhere at the release of tension you didn’t even know you had.

The line between physical and psychic stress often blurs.

We often operate at such a high level of continuous stress that it doesn’t even register unless we disturb the flow.

A few months ago, my father and I attended Tai Chi classes. It was something he had wanted to try for quite some time. I found a class offered at the community center in my town and we went. I was used to the gentle flow of yoga, which the instructor told me is a cousin to Tai Chi, but this required an even higher level of calm and restraint. With my high-strung, perpetually-on-a-treadmill ways, it was a stretch of a different kind. I told myself to slow down as my cloud hands swept across the room, but it was something long since foreign to my body.

At one of the sessions, our teacher led us through a meditation we’d never done before. I didn’t know how relaxed I could get without lying prostrate on the floor, but I dutifully took my breaths and moved my hands – and started to cry.

It was not a bad day. I did not feel overly stressed, anxious, or upset. And yet, once I allowed my body and mind to slow, the pressure slack, the excess overflowed.

I wanted to kiss this little old lady for releasing my five elements.

But I need to channel my own little old lady. I cannot look outside for inner contentment. I must make the time to stretch in the morning, to adjust my posture, to make a mental scan of my body and release the tension.

I need to be more self-aware and body-aware so that a small chink in the dam doesn’t lead to a crazy rush of water I didn’t even know was collecting. It shouldn’t take a breach to make me notice the physical, mental, and emotional stress I’m holding.

My mental and physical health should be about maintenance, not damage control.

anxiety, May is Mental Health Month, Mental Health, motherhood, parenting

Why three is the most stressful number of children to have – BUT mothers of four are MORE relaxed | Mail Online

Why three is the most stressful number of children to have – BUT mothers of four are MORE relaxed | Mail Online.

Third time’s a charm. 1,2,3 – GO! The three amigos. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Celery, carrots, and onions. Huey, Duey, and Louey. The Three Little Pigs. Even the tri-cornered hat. Three is a magic number!

Unless you have three children. Then, apparently, it drives you out of your gourd.

My husband sent me the link to the article above in an e-mail one day with the subject line, “interesting article . . .” Well, the ellipses said everything.

The article, though, doesn’t give any specific reasons why, I thought – at least none I hadn’t already known. My husband and I had already joked that we’d moved from man-on-man defense to zone defense once we had three. I already told people that the only thing that helped going from two to three was that you already knew how to keep multiple balls in the air – but that, now, there was always a ball in the air. The woman quoted who said it was easy going from one to two? Yeah, no. I swear my second is still a light sleeper because I was constantly shrieking at her sister to stay away from her as a newborn (can you say undiagnosed case of some sort of postpartum something? No wonder the $#*% the fan with the third).

As far as the benefits of having four, I already reap some of those now with three. A Dr. Taylor in the article says about perfectionism that “‘there’s just not enough space in your head’ once you have at least four children.” There is no available space in my brain. Burn photos or video to a DVD? I knew how to do that once. That knowledge oozed out my ear during one of the twenty minute periods of sleep of some child’s infancy. And forget head space – what of physical or mental energy? Once upon a time I hung sheetrock at Habitat for Humanity home sites, after scoring and snapping it myself. I fought vehemently to do things around the house my way. Now if the home improvement fairy comes and takes care of things, I don’t really care as long as it gets done (with the possible exception of painting/decorating). Something’s gotta give.

And that’s where I do agree with something Dr. Taylor says. “The more children you have, the more confident you become in your parenting abilities. You have to let go.” There is confidence in repetition, practice. I didn’t worry about ‘breaking’ my baby after countless diaper changes and pulling little arms through tiny shirt sleeves. I didn’t freak out as much over breast feeding and whether they were getting enough to eat. But did I worry if I was doing enough? Not doing the damage that would land my kids in their own form of therapy someday? Heck, yeah. That didn’t change with multiple kiddos. That increased. Still, for self-preservation – and really, theirs too – you do have to let go.

A dear friend, who had her three children three steps ahead of mine, and therefore in the as-cool-as-a-cucumber phase while I was just entering the anal-retentive, told me when I had my third, that I was much more relaxed. When I relayed the story to my father-in-law, hinting that she’d called me anal-retentive, he agreed! I hadn’t seen what everyone else had. People laugh now because I’m so laissez-faire with everyday concerns. When my impatient five year-old says she wants a snack so emphatically that it sounds like she’s gone without food for days, I say, ‘That’s nice.” After the thud, I wait for the scream or wail. If my child wants to go to school looking like it’s mismatch day everyday of year, more power to her.

I could be accused of being lax. I could be accused of swinging the pendulum so far away from anal-retentive, it’s a tad too much. But somedays I feel like I’m living inside an episode of The Three Stooges.

At least my kids are cuter

I can’t be all things to everyone. I sure as hell can’t be perfect. And I’m not going to try for a fourth to test this article’s theories!

anxiety, May is Mental Health Month, medication, Mental Health, motherhood, parenting, postpartum depression

You Got Some ‘Splainin to Do

This morning my daughter sat down to some interesting breakfast reading.

Coming home late after an evening “med check” appointment with my physician, I had left the visit summary on the dining room table. Yesterday’s visit went swimmingly well. No problems to report. Successful treatment measures. A-ok – until the next six month visit.

The chart information on the second half of the sheet told a different story, though; that of my history. The medication I’m on; my ‘problem list’.

Depressive Disorder Not Elsewhere Classified.

I’m hoping that eight years old is not old enough to know what that means. Hell, I don’t really know what that means. The first time I saw it, I stopped in my tracks. I remember the NOS designation on IEPs from my teaching days. I remember the frustration of parents and teachers who knew something was up, but no diagnosis could be made. How would this individual get the help he or she needed without a direction to go in?

Now that was me!

My eight year old wouldn’t be able to recognize the name of the medication I’m on either, Sertraline sounding more like a foreign language than a medicine to help her mother get through life.

Thank God, in this case, for medical illiteracy. I’m all for blowing apart the stigma, but haven’t quite figured out how to explain it to my young children yet. How much information would help them see it’s perfectly acceptable to struggle and receive help and how much would open them to an overwhelming, suffocating side of this world they don’t need to know exists yet?

I didn’t know there was a family history of whatever the hell ails my family until I was an adult starting to suffer from similar problems myself. As a child, there was an underlying tension at family gatherings, but having no explanation and no other frame of reference, I just thought that was how it was. Do I let my kids live in ignorant ‘bliss’? Do I give my oldest an age-appropriate mete-ing out of Momma’s struggles so she doesn’t think she’s responsible for Momma’s wrath? Or will I be giving them the framework for their own self-fulfilling depressive prophecy?

All important questions. All of whose answers will remain unspecified for now, just like my diagnosis. I’m still trying to wrap my head around all this.

anxiety, May is Mental Health Month, Mental Health, motherhood, postpartum depression, Recovery

Don’t Fear the (Ir)rational

As the sun rose hours after the baby’s birth, I was fading fast. I had slept maybe two hours of the past 24 and didn’t have the strength to eat my breakfast. The nurse suggested the baby go to the nursery, I drink a pitcher of water, eat, and sleep. I did and woke up a short while later feeling a bit more human. When my husband went to retrieve the baby and came back empty-handed, the feeling was short-lived. “Where’s the baby?” I asked, panic creeping into my voice.

“Oh, her bracelets fell off, they’re just putting on some new ones,” he answered, easy-going as ever, which could’ve been an indication of my overreaction but went unheeded. I went through every possible combination of events I could think of: were the bracelets in the bassinet, did the nurses take her out of the bassinet, were there any other babies in the nursery? What I was really getting at was: how will we know this is our baby? My husband, thinking with a rational mind, told me it was fine; they were giving her new bracelets to match ours and were checking the serial number on her Baby Lo-Jack, the nickname for the security device affixed to all babies in the hospital. Still, I balked.

I worried for months, a year after. I had moments of clarity: an expression on her face as she gazed up at me, identical to her oldest sister when she was an infant; her tiny hands patting me on the back as she wrapped me in a hug; shadows of family members in baby photos. But always, when I allowed it to seep through, that dark thought,

‘Did I bring home the right baby?’

I was afraid that if I loved her too much someone would come to take her away from me. The licensed social worker I had started seeing suggested I felt that way because things – the pregnancy, labor, delivery, and recovery – hadn’t gone according to my plans.

It wasn’t until we sped down the highway one day months later that the truth caught up with me. As I saw the family resemblance written all over my baby’s face, I realized that I hadn’t thought she was mine because I still hadn’t accepted the fact that I was having a third child. I hadn’t sanctioned it. It hadn’t gone according to plan. I was still grasping for some sort of control that I hadn’t felt since being plunged into the chaos of three children awash with my own anxiety. Did I not see the resemblance because I didn’t want to see it?

Yes and no. Or yes, but not totally. It wasn’t my wounded psyche that was totally to blame. As my therapist pointed out, irrational fears are another symptom of postpartum depression. I more than filled that box on the survey. It was a strange split, though. Rationally, I knew she was mine and accepted her with the unconditional love of a mother. In the stark predawn hours of loneliness or moments of love bordering on too intense, my irrational self would pull back, fraught with worry and dread.

My husband irresolutely assured me she was ours. “What do I need to do to prove it to you?” he asked. “Do you want to get blood tests done?” “She’s ours, Jen, I know it.” “I was right there beside you when she was born.” To which I responded, sometimes verbally – and later as the argument wore out, silently – “But that was before she went to the nursery and lost her bracelets.”

I couldn’t shut off the stream of irrational thought and worry – even though I knew there were holes all over my argument. I felt silly voicing my concerns, but wanted other people to tell me how much she looked like her sisters or me or my husband. I needed validation that the ‘voices’ in my head were wrong. I couldn’t defeat them myself.

And I didn’t. With love and support from my husband, my fabulous social worker, lifestyle changes, the passage of time, and eventually medication, the irrational worry stopped. It became definable, ‘boxable’, and I shut it away. I don’t think it’ll come back, but I think I’ll always remember how real and frightening it was.

anxiety, Living

All You Can Eat Buffet

Buffets are not the best means of eating for anxious people.

So many choices, so much activity, so many chances for E. Coli and bacteria.

Then the bus loads of people coming in, adding to the tumult. Kids cranky from traveling. Everybody wanting food at the same time. Not unlike the distractions of life, pulling our attentions from our goal: homing in on the buffet line.

The myriad choices are like our choices in life. So many desirable options. Mac n’ cheese. Fried chicken. Tostadas. Sweet and sour pork. Then what we should eat: the salad. Also a lot like life, no? We can choose what we know we need and is usually more cost effective (i.e. veggies) vs. what we want or think we should have (bacon-wrapped filet).

In the world of an anxious person, who cannot prioritize, who perseverates over decision-making, who gets overwhelmed easily, the all-you-can-eat buffet is a microcosm for life on a very bad day.

Unfortunately in real life, we do not have a Reina, the queen of bussing, to clear away our messes – or watch us to decide when that’s needed.

Or an all-you-can-eat ice cream bar. Damn it.

anxiety, motherhood, parenting

Holiday Road

Packing for a trip is worse than the outside stimuli that necessitated the trip in the first place.

At least with children it is.

A vacation. A getaway. A respite. From everyday life and its trappings. From routines and schedules.

That requires that every stitch of clothing in the home be washed so the one pair of sweatpants your child wants is clean – and located in the bottom of a basket of clothes that had been clean to begin with.

That requires digging through bins of off-season clothes to locate the bathing suits – and then digging some more to find the perfect one with the peace signs.

That requires testing dry-erase markers till we find one that hasn’t dried out yet for the all important game of car bingo – which will more likely be used to tattoo the inside of the car than the bingo card.

Books, magnetic games, coloring pages, stuffed friends, flash lights. . . . packed, unpacked, played with, tossed about the floor where they had previously sat stacked neatly waiting for loading into the car in the morning.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Can I just leave the kids at home?

Then it would be a vacation.

anxiety, Identity, Living

Still Waters Run Deep

I’m not stagnant; I’m just catching my breath.

A wise woman reiterated these words to me recently. I’d heard them before, but benefited from their run through my ears once more. And probably will again someday.

Two Christmases ago, my mother presented me with a framed quote from Jodi Hills.

She wasn’t where she had been,

she wasn’t where she was going,

but she was on her way.

Though at times like this, when I’m walking in my sweats through the land of sinus fog after days of leading my children out of it, and I feel like I’m in some sort of stasis, I am not the person I was a few years ago. My cynical, smart-ass, survive-with-laughter self says, that’s for sure. And there are a good number of negatives with what I’ve experienced over the last three to four years. But after being so low, I was able to honestly assess to which heights I wanted to rise. And how to get there. And how to push myself despite the risks and fear because I realized joy is ours to grasp, not to be handed. And that I wasn’t alone at the bottom of the pit. Maybe I could shine a little light down into it, if not pull someone out of it.

Realizing and doing are two different things, however. I have a business plan to write. I have a child who is too smart for her own (and my) good that I have yet to enroll in preschool. I have my own anxiety to swallow. And the usual chaos that raising three children entails (Seriously, did I not see this coming?).

Right now I like being in my sweats. But I wonder if being in them too long will make me break out in a cold sweat. Too long out of the loop. Too long in the confines of my own house with little people. Longer than the short fuse of my resolve from lessons hard learned.

It’s easy to be a wimp. It’s so damn hard to push forward into uncharted waters. I’m trying at least to keep up with the current; tread water or cling to my little rock in the midst of it all. The flow certainly isn’t stagnant, though. I’m just trying to get enough huff and puff to get back in there.

anxiety, Identity, Living, motherhood

Paradox

Snowflakes on lilac buds

Melting on the green back of the sandbox

Sunshine shower

Birds chirping, snow falling

Springtime in New England

My daughter wanted to set up the sandbox today. She’s been asking to hang the birdhouses outside for a month now. She and her older sister roller skated in the sand lining the edge of the road. She finally gave up when it started snowing. It’s springtime now, but the scene outside the window doesn’t look like it.

With an early release from school, I declared it a day to run around the backyard like nuts. My three year-old was the only one with me. I don’t waannnnnna go outside, said the eight year-old. Can I have a snack first, asked the five year-old. Belly full, she’s the one that hatched all those vernal equinox-inspired plans. She has a very real sense of injustice. When she awoke the first day of winter and saw no snow on the ground, she was pissed. And now? No Easter decorations up even though there’s snow on the ground? What’s up, Mom?

The snow today actually had my back, though. The first flakes floated to the ground mere minutes after her latest protestation about an empty sandbox. One good thing about a schizophrenic mood change on Mother Nature’s part. And one that I should be able to appreciate given my latest post!

There really should be nothing bizarre about snow showers two days into spring, though. Just because the calendar says it’s spring, doesn’t mean that we should wake up one morning to instantly green grass and gardens abloom. Two days ago it was winter. Two days ago snow was de rigeur. The passing of seasons is a gradual progression. Leave it to humans to expect instant results. Leave it to us to restrict the moving of the days in tiny boxes on a calendar and expect the weather to follow suit.

It was bizarre, though, to hear the symphony of birds gearing up for spring as the snow fell. They were a twitter with nest-building, bug-hunting, flit-flying from tree to tree. They seemingly paid no mind to the fat, wet flakes flying around them. Maybe I should take a page from their book – rejoicing in the expectation of spring, knowing it’s coming, instead of lamenting the fact that it’s not here yet. There is beauty amidst the cold and dark. And there is the promise of warmth and light at the other end of it.

anxiety, Living

Bring on the Suck

I should’ve known when my previously straight hair went haywire that the proverbial poo was about to hit the fan.

Grade ten, three years after my first menstrual period, and apparently just long enough for my hormones to hit their stride, I chopped my nearly waist-length hair to above my shoulders. And it corkscrewed.

Wow, I never knew you had curly hair. You should’ve cut it a long time ago. Look what’s happened now that all that weight’s gone.

Looking back, I think it had everything to do with weight, but not the long drawn-out weight of my tired tresses.

I’m now three years out from the birth of my last child. And I’m miserable.

This is the longest I’ve gone without being pregnant or breastfeeding since 2004. That’s a feat in and of itself. I should be on top of the world. Instead, I’m at the bottom of some pit, the one where my hormones get back on track to torment me.

I’m out of that stasis where my body is in some sort of tenuous cycle, tentatively burgeoning and bleeding because it’s out of practice. Training camp is over. It’s on like Donkey Kong. Cramps that say, get ready, I’m coming. An ache in my pelvis that threatens, I’ll bottom out if you’re not careful. And depression that moves in and refuses to leave, until it is mysteriously vacant one morning like a lover leaving an open wound.

I’ve popped the ibuprofen. I’ve seen my therapist. I’ve researched thyroid malfunctions and requested specialized blood work from my physician.

Now I ask, Is this the new normal?

After carrying and bearing three children; after wracking my body to the point of breaking; after rending my soul to its minutest form – is this the new modus operandi? This is how things are to be?

Is there a physical band-aid? A spiritual fix? Some modicum of acceptance to make this all bearable?

I’m not whining about cramps. I’m not lamenting PMS. My body is in a 28-day bag of hurt. How far into that bag I get dipped depends on the day. But no one day is particularly fun.

My daughter asked me the other day why I get my period because I’m not having any more kids. A few weeks ago she questioned me when I said I get [even more] sad and tired a few days a month. (My husband said to not go there with her – yet; keep her blissfully ignorant) Good questions. It doesn’t seem to make much sense. I don’t understand it and it’s happening to me.

My levels are off. Some levels. Who knows which ones or why. But it’s a whole new level of suck.

Piles of Pooh

Chopping Potatoes

and other metaphors for motherhood

Category Archives: anxiety