It’s been one hell of a week for me. I’ve had so much stress this week, and I’ve been trying to come up with some new techniques to handle it. For as long as I can remember I’ve had issues with anxiety. I have panic attacks, and I’ve learned to control them most of the time, but sometimes I have a really bad week where any little thing can trigger my anxiety. Stress is always a big factor, and the fact that I’ve been stressing over a ton of things like taxes and family issues has caused me to have quite a few panic attacks this week.
Another problem is I have trouble sleeping when I’m having my anxiety problems. Not being able to sleep stresses me out even more which in turn causes me to have more problems with anxiety.
The last time I talked to my doctor he offered to put me on a low dose medication for the anxiety, but I don’t want to do that. I’m a firm believer that you shouldn’t take medications just because there’s something available to help you. I want to stay off medications as long as I can find other ways to control my situation. If things get too severe for me to control them myself, then I will look into medications.
My mom has anxiety problems as well, so it’s obvious where most of my own problems probably originated. My mom’s anxiety got to be so severe that she tried medication. My sister and I were elementary school aged at the time, and all I can remember is that the medication turned my mom into a zombie.
She only stayed on the medication for about 3 months because it only made her situation worse. It would put her into such a deep sleep that she couldn’t make herself get up in the mornings to take us to school. My grandma would come over in the mornings, wake us up, and get us off to school. She’d pick us up from school, and we might go home or she might take us to her house. Most days my mom was too much of a zombie to even function.
The doctor’s remedy was to counteract the medication with another one that would keep her up during the day. Basically he had her on a downer and an upper at the same time, and around the 3 month mark she had a complete breakdown.
I don’t want to be that person.
When I woke up after only 2 hours of sleep tonight I decided I needed to take advantage of this time. I’m using it to look through a few anxiety forums searching for information that can help me control my own problems without the medication.
One of my major panic attack triggers are thunderstorms in the summer when I’m home alone. Things can turn severe quickly here, and that’s the thing that triggers my attacks. I know that time of year will be coming up soon, so I want to work now to have a handle on things before the summer gets here. I feel like if I spend more time right now making sure I’m prepared maybe I won’t have as many attacks this year.
One thing I’m happy to say is that blogging has definitely helped me improve my anxiety issues. When I feel a panic attack beginning, a lot of times I’ll sit down and begin blogging. It doesn’t matter what I’m writing about. All that matters is I’m doing something to take my mind off the situation, and blogging really has done that for me. Having multiple blogs means I’ve got plenty of options for my blogging, and I will definitely be blogging for many years to come.
