I did not feel like writing about struggling yesterday, but I actually do today. Every body struggles, so what's the big deal with writing about ones personal struggle, except for that whole icky vulnerable feeling that results from exposing oneself.
One of my favorite quotes is, "Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind." In my experience, this is true. Every.single.person. I know a lot of people who have big and sometimes heartbreaking struggles. I know one young lady who has rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 20. I have several friends who are guiding their kids through difficult challenges. Some of them are raising kids by themselves while working full-time jobs. I have friends who have battled cancer and won, yet still have to look over their shoulder for any recurrence. I have friends whose mothers have cancer, and they are working their way through that difficult journey. Watching them fight through their challenges is so inspiring to me, and makes me realize that mine aren't as big as they sometimes seem to me. My life in general is full of blessings that far outweigh what I am going to write about here. With that said, here I go.
My challenge is really... myself. Managing myself, that is. I've written about it in here before, but I struggle with keeping the chemicals in my brain balanced. Between hormonal shifts and seasonal changes, I tend to be up and down a lot.
I am pretty balanced for a couple weeks every month. Some months I stay balanced longer than other months. I feel good without even trying. I am more outgoing, and socializing comes naturally to me. I smile more and people reflect that back to me. I like to think that this is who I really am. BUT, the other part of the month always shows up, even as I pray the good times will never end. It comes with different intensities, but it always comes. If you look up PMDD, it will describe a lot of what I am going to talk about here. This isn't just a pms thing, it's something that takes over my life for weeks at a time, every month.
Although anxiety is the main issue I will talk about here, I also experience major loss of interest in pretty much all areas of life. Total lack of motivation and concentration. I've even experienced dizziness so bad that I have had to pull over while driving (that happened last February, a particularly brutal month). There are times I just feel.so.very.angry, and so on edge that something as small as the television being too loud will make me feel like losing it. I get crazy migraine head aches some months. I have other physical symptoms too, but they are nothing compared to where I go in my head during the bad weeks. The world smiles back at me during my good weeks, and then world also has a way of reflecting all of my swirling difficult emotions during the bad weeks.
I know that it probably is confusing to the people I am around the most- my friends at the hall, probably even work. Smiling doesn't come as naturally because of the brain fog that shows up (once again in different intensities). Socializing, especially with large groups, becomes almost painful. Being in enclosed places with large groups of people gets really hard. Going to the mall or the store loses any enticement. I try to go on weekday mornings, if possible, because there won't be as many people there. If I do have to go, my heart is usually racing. Eye contact makes it worse so I tend to stare straight ahead or at the floor (this last month when I had to do some last minute school shopping with Kloe, I intentionally didn't wear my glasses or contacts, and it really helped). Sometimes (like a slightly crazy person), I hum softly to myself because it helps me calm down. I intentionally take deep calming breaths, and that seems to help too. But mostly, I get in and out of the store as soon as possible.
Going to the hall for meetings can be hard too. While I very much want to be there, when it is over and every one is standing and there is the buzz of voices all around, I start to feel a bit panicky. I want Derrick and the kids to be able to talk to everyone so I don't want to rush them out, so there are quite a few times I will bolt to the car and wait for them. I know it makes me look very antisocial (probably because it IS antisocial).
For the last two weeks I was in that bad part of the month and could hardly make it five minutes in the hall after meeting. This week I am back on the good two weeks and last night I stayed for awhile after meeting and chatted with no anxiety (although I still couldn't stay long because I had some things I had to get done at home)- just like that. Once again, this all hits with varying intensities each month. Some months the anxiety is completely manageable, and it doesn't disrupt how I interact socially as much. It's very unpredictable.
Being like this is hard on my relationships. Not so much with my family and super close friends, because they understand I am doing the best I can and they choose to love me in spite of it. It's more with friends that maybe don't know me as well, because it's not something I just talk about all of the time (although apparently I do write about it!)
So, I am extremely cyclical throughout my weeks. Now add in the cycle of seasons. Winter almost sends me over the edge. I feel like I am hanging on to my sanity by my fingernails by the end of it.
I do everything I can to manage all of this. Some things I've tried have helped, some not so much.
I went to a doctor to balance my hormones for quite awhile. Even though I took tons of pills (bovine in nature, supposed to replace missing hormones), used progesterone creme, took a gaba supplement and 5htp to control the anxiety, I didn't feel the results justified the crazy cost. I'm disenchanted with the medical community as a whole when it comes to hormone issues with women. I've told every doctor I have been to about how this just takes over my life, and how unbearable it can be. They look at me, see a woman who is physically healthy as far as they can see, and then they treat it as just one of those things a woman has to live with. No big deal. Grr. I feel like besides message boards full of other women going through this, I mostly am going to have to keep trying to figure it out myself. I've toyed with the idea of taking birth control pills again (it helps some women), but am a little scared because I had such a violent reaction to them before.
There are some things that have helped though. I am extremely regular with exercise- even though I have fallen temporarily off of the running wagon, I am still a regular at the gym. I try to eat healthily. Not perfect, by any means, but reasonable. I try to stay in a positive frame of mind and surround myself with awesome people (and there are a lot of you), and even in my darker times I try to stay connected. I go to the meetings regularly, fighting that voice that is telling me to stay home. I keep going to work- very rarely do I call in sick or let myself off of the hook. I fight through the bad days, and do my best to ignore the anxiety. I take medication which actually has been helping quite a bit. I try very hard not to take it out on my family and friends, even if it means hiding out in my room when I'm feeling unreasonably agitated; a healthy family is completely essential to my frame of mind. One of the best things I ever did for myself was to marry a very supportive man. His kindness and understanding during the bad times take a huge amount of the stress off of my shoulders. I've also tried hard to develop a separate voice of reason that is as detached from my emotions as possible. It doesn't make the feelings go away, but it helps me to manage my reactions to life a little better, and to have some discernment as to what would normally bother me versus my current feelings toward a situation. I'm not always 100% successful with that one, but I seem to be getting better at it as time goes on.
The most frustrating part of this, is that I've been like this as long as I can remember. I know how to manage myself better than I used to, but I haven't been able to make it go away. And the really sucky part as a woman, is it probably isn't EVER going to go away. As time goes on, it will just morph into some other, equally difficult thing to manage.
So, there you have it. This isn't something I like to talk or write about all of the time, because I don't want it to have any bigger claim on my mind and life than it already has. It is my biggest goal to be a positive person. I want to be a positive presence in my kids lives, Derrick's life, my sister and dad's lives, and my friends lives. Even though this is something I will always be dealing with, it is not who I am, and it is my goal is to still act like who I really am regardless of what is going on inside.
One of my favorite quotes is, "Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind." In my experience, this is true. Every.single.person. I know a lot of people who have big and sometimes heartbreaking struggles. I know one young lady who has rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 20. I have several friends who are guiding their kids through difficult challenges. Some of them are raising kids by themselves while working full-time jobs. I have friends who have battled cancer and won, yet still have to look over their shoulder for any recurrence. I have friends whose mothers have cancer, and they are working their way through that difficult journey. Watching them fight through their challenges is so inspiring to me, and makes me realize that mine aren't as big as they sometimes seem to me. My life in general is full of blessings that far outweigh what I am going to write about here. With that said, here I go.
My challenge is really... myself. Managing myself, that is. I've written about it in here before, but I struggle with keeping the chemicals in my brain balanced. Between hormonal shifts and seasonal changes, I tend to be up and down a lot.
I am pretty balanced for a couple weeks every month. Some months I stay balanced longer than other months. I feel good without even trying. I am more outgoing, and socializing comes naturally to me. I smile more and people reflect that back to me. I like to think that this is who I really am. BUT, the other part of the month always shows up, even as I pray the good times will never end. It comes with different intensities, but it always comes. If you look up PMDD, it will describe a lot of what I am going to talk about here. This isn't just a pms thing, it's something that takes over my life for weeks at a time, every month.
Although anxiety is the main issue I will talk about here, I also experience major loss of interest in pretty much all areas of life. Total lack of motivation and concentration. I've even experienced dizziness so bad that I have had to pull over while driving (that happened last February, a particularly brutal month). There are times I just feel.so.very.angry, and so on edge that something as small as the television being too loud will make me feel like losing it. I get crazy migraine head aches some months. I have other physical symptoms too, but they are nothing compared to where I go in my head during the bad weeks. The world smiles back at me during my good weeks, and then world also has a way of reflecting all of my swirling difficult emotions during the bad weeks.
I know that it probably is confusing to the people I am around the most- my friends at the hall, probably even work. Smiling doesn't come as naturally because of the brain fog that shows up (once again in different intensities). Socializing, especially with large groups, becomes almost painful. Being in enclosed places with large groups of people gets really hard. Going to the mall or the store loses any enticement. I try to go on weekday mornings, if possible, because there won't be as many people there. If I do have to go, my heart is usually racing. Eye contact makes it worse so I tend to stare straight ahead or at the floor (this last month when I had to do some last minute school shopping with Kloe, I intentionally didn't wear my glasses or contacts, and it really helped). Sometimes (like a slightly crazy person), I hum softly to myself because it helps me calm down. I intentionally take deep calming breaths, and that seems to help too. But mostly, I get in and out of the store as soon as possible.
Going to the hall for meetings can be hard too. While I very much want to be there, when it is over and every one is standing and there is the buzz of voices all around, I start to feel a bit panicky. I want Derrick and the kids to be able to talk to everyone so I don't want to rush them out, so there are quite a few times I will bolt to the car and wait for them. I know it makes me look very antisocial (probably because it IS antisocial).
For the last two weeks I was in that bad part of the month and could hardly make it five minutes in the hall after meeting. This week I am back on the good two weeks and last night I stayed for awhile after meeting and chatted with no anxiety (although I still couldn't stay long because I had some things I had to get done at home)- just like that. Once again, this all hits with varying intensities each month. Some months the anxiety is completely manageable, and it doesn't disrupt how I interact socially as much. It's very unpredictable.
Being like this is hard on my relationships. Not so much with my family and super close friends, because they understand I am doing the best I can and they choose to love me in spite of it. It's more with friends that maybe don't know me as well, because it's not something I just talk about all of the time (although apparently I do write about it!)
So, I am extremely cyclical throughout my weeks. Now add in the cycle of seasons. Winter almost sends me over the edge. I feel like I am hanging on to my sanity by my fingernails by the end of it.
I do everything I can to manage all of this. Some things I've tried have helped, some not so much.
I went to a doctor to balance my hormones for quite awhile. Even though I took tons of pills (bovine in nature, supposed to replace missing hormones), used progesterone creme, took a gaba supplement and 5htp to control the anxiety, I didn't feel the results justified the crazy cost. I'm disenchanted with the medical community as a whole when it comes to hormone issues with women. I've told every doctor I have been to about how this just takes over my life, and how unbearable it can be. They look at me, see a woman who is physically healthy as far as they can see, and then they treat it as just one of those things a woman has to live with. No big deal. Grr. I feel like besides message boards full of other women going through this, I mostly am going to have to keep trying to figure it out myself. I've toyed with the idea of taking birth control pills again (it helps some women), but am a little scared because I had such a violent reaction to them before.
There are some things that have helped though. I am extremely regular with exercise- even though I have fallen temporarily off of the running wagon, I am still a regular at the gym. I try to eat healthily. Not perfect, by any means, but reasonable. I try to stay in a positive frame of mind and surround myself with awesome people (and there are a lot of you), and even in my darker times I try to stay connected. I go to the meetings regularly, fighting that voice that is telling me to stay home. I keep going to work- very rarely do I call in sick or let myself off of the hook. I fight through the bad days, and do my best to ignore the anxiety. I take medication which actually has been helping quite a bit. I try very hard not to take it out on my family and friends, even if it means hiding out in my room when I'm feeling unreasonably agitated; a healthy family is completely essential to my frame of mind. One of the best things I ever did for myself was to marry a very supportive man. His kindness and understanding during the bad times take a huge amount of the stress off of my shoulders. I've also tried hard to develop a separate voice of reason that is as detached from my emotions as possible. It doesn't make the feelings go away, but it helps me to manage my reactions to life a little better, and to have some discernment as to what would normally bother me versus my current feelings toward a situation. I'm not always 100% successful with that one, but I seem to be getting better at it as time goes on.
The most frustrating part of this, is that I've been like this as long as I can remember. I know how to manage myself better than I used to, but I haven't been able to make it go away. And the really sucky part as a woman, is it probably isn't EVER going to go away. As time goes on, it will just morph into some other, equally difficult thing to manage.
So, there you have it. This isn't something I like to talk or write about all of the time, because I don't want it to have any bigger claim on my mind and life than it already has. It is my biggest goal to be a positive person. I want to be a positive presence in my kids lives, Derrick's life, my sister and dad's lives, and my friends lives. Even though this is something I will always be dealing with, it is not who I am, and it is my goal is to still act like who I really am regardless of what is going on inside.
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