Anxiety is Ruining My Life, but I am Slowly Reclaiming it

It is surprising how often the word “anxiety” is thrown around in popular culture and social media in today’s world. It seems everyone suffers from it or knows someone who suffers from it. Whether this is an indication of our culture today in the way of how we perceive life, or how we overreact to things, I am not qualified to say. I may only speak from personal experience and pray to God it is perceived as true and honest in a world where everything is questioned and everyone is biologically and chemically “messed up”.

I have been researching anxiety since realizing what an enormous role it played in my life, and have come to realize no two living beings experience anxiety the same way. I have also learned that anxiety is a normal part of everyday living, and it is how we respond to anxiety-inducing stimuli that decide if we truly have an “anxiety disorder”. There are also various types of anxiety which I do not have the time nor space to get into, but will highly recommend the book “Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety” by Joseph LeDoux, for those of you who are interested in learning more about the complicated diagnoses and phenomenon that is anxiety. As I said before, I am not qualified to speak on anxiety, let alone diagnose anyone or even myself on the type of anxiety disorder they suffer from. I may only speak honestly from my own experience.

As a young child, I never experienced anxiety. I had no trouble in new situations, made friends very easily, and was excited to meet new people and try new things. Going out in public was a fun activity, and running around doing silly little things by myself or with friends never made me feel watched or criticized. I am not exactly sure when the switch occurred, but I believe I am getting close to tracking down its origin. For now, we will just say it happened in early middle school, a year or two after my family packed up our bags in Iowa, where I had grown up and lived for the first 10.5 years of my life, and relocated to sunny Arizona. I am not sure if it was initially triggered by the move to first an apartment complex, and a few months later to a more permanent home, or if it was from the relentless bullying and adolescent female cattiness I experienced for the first time in my life around age 12, but I do know that somewhere between age 12 and 14, I began to develop an unhealthy amount of anxiety,

I had a small group of friends for a while, which made me believe I was still the outgoing extrovert I had always been, but I was on the outskirts of that group and stayed there despite various efforts to become a more cared about and permanent member. Eventually, I was pushed out completely and after a few weeks of no friends at all, befriended someone who had gone through a shockingly similar experience with the same person/people. Even then, I didn’t see that I was slowly closing in on myself and rotting away inside.

We hung out all the time but never really befriended anyone else. She was my best and only friend and I hers. I thought it was simply because I was too goofy or weird or awesome for other people to understand, but I now realize I was just too afraid to let anyone else in, out of fear that they may hurt me like others had in the past.

That’s how it all started, pretty simply enough. A fear of being abandoned and left alone. A fairly common fear in today’s world, but since I left it untreated and failed -or maybe refused- to see it, it festered into something much worse and even more detrimental.

High school was tough for me, as the one and the only true friend I had gone to a different school than me. I managed to make a few friends, but nothing too deep or personal, really just convenience friendships at first. I had a few friends from middle school that followed me into high school, but they were comfortable friendships, and they were not exactly inviting me over to hang out on the weekends. I managed to find a few nice girls to befriend and hang out with and attend concerts with, and I thought I had finally found my niche. I connected with a girl more than I had connected with anyone in a while, and ironically enough, she was a bit of an introvert. Although then I just thought it was a situation of “opposites attract”, and not a sign that maybe I too had morphed into an introvert.

My sophomore year was a blur of senseless bullying and name calling from people I did not even know, a dark depression, continuation from an eating disorder from grade school, and a desire to just be alone. I ended up transferring to my best friends high school for my junior and senior year because of all of it, and hardly anyone even cared to see me leave. There were a handful of people upset I was leaving, but then again, in my own defense, none of them made an effort to see me before I left, or to keep up contact once I was gone. In their defense, however, neither did I.

To speed up the story for your benefit and also for my own, I will paraphrase and quickly jump through junior and senior year.

Junior year was at a new school with my best friend in a way better Theatre program that I could be proud of. I had my first boyfriend and first kiss, then I had my heartbroken when he distanced himself and cheated on me, and to this day I cannot think of why. I got into another relationship a few months later (after an angry couple of weeks I recovered from the first relationship and felt ready for a new one. My mistake), which lasted a little more than 4 months before falling apart. It was long distance, and after I went out and surprised him and met him for the first time, the relationship began to fall apart. I denied it, as we were both already discussing marriage, but a couple months later we broke up. A month after that he accused me of lying to him about my morals and about who I was, pretty much ripping out what was left of my heart, as at that point I was still in love with him.

Senior year was pretty decent in the beginning. Got the lead in a school play, made wonderful friends that lasted out of high school, and I really truly felt that I was in a great place, but I could not explain why. At the end of my senior year, I went through another difficult and rebellious phase that I choose not to talk about or think about since I truly do not believe that was me, and it was just hurt and pain from stuffing my anxiety and depressing down and not allowing myself to see it for what it was.

That summer I went to a foster care kids camp, made another wonderful friend, met my boyfriend who I have been dating ever since, and found a new thing I loved doing.

Fast forward even more because this is long enough as it is and I have not even begun talking about what I wanted to.

Here I am now, in counseling for anxiety, and doing everything I can to save myself from this ugly monster that I have allowed to take such deep root inside of me. I was unable to see it for myself, but being in a close relationship with someone has the tendency to make things like this come out. I realized just how bad this anxiety was. I had had panic attacks in the past, and I did call it “anxiety”, but never thought that it was anything to worry about. People panic sometimes! Anxiety is normal! No need to look any further.

It got to the point that going out in public by myself would put me in a panic. I would be extremely anxious in any social situation, even if I knew people there. I did not want to try anything new or do anything out of fear, plain and simple, fear. I was wasting away from fear, but still wanting to go and do all these fun things, but allowing this fear to take over and not do any of it. It was as if my old self, the extroverted self, was trying to claw its way out but this inky black anxiety was stuffing it down as deep as possible and telling me “you can’t do that. Just think of what could happen”.

I tried simply telling myself “don’t be anxious. You’re being ridiculous” and that didn’t work.

I went into counseling, not really knowing why but feeling as if I needed to, and it all came out.

I am now working through it, I have been equipped with psychological tools to combat this anxiety, and I am doing better.

I went to the young adults' ministry at my church with a friend which was a huge feat for me. That was a totally new social situation, and it was nerve-wracking, but I did it. And guess what the message was on that night? Well, really a number of things, but what stuck out to me the most, what I feel was talked about for the bulk of the message, was ANXIETY. The next Sunday, at my church, the message was totally on FEAR and ANXIETY and WORRY. God was showing me Biblical tools to combat my anxiety. I felt such a calm come over me, and I felt so loved and cared for. My God is truly amazing and does not abandon me. He knows what I need, and He knows exactly when I need it. I had the tools to combat my anxiety from a psychological standpoint, I knew how to think through it to overcome it, but I didn’t have a spiritual tool. He knew I would never be able to fight this battle with Satan -and yes, I am now positive my anxiety is ruled by Satan to pull me away from God and make me self-focused instead of Kindom-driven- without His tools, and He gave them to me exactly when my mind was in the right place to receive them. I am usually fairly anxious at my church since there are a lot of people around me that I do not know and am only familiar with, and it is a social situation, and we sit far closer to the stage than I am comfortable with, but that week, I was feeling so normal and ready. God prepared me for that message, and He prepared our pastor to deliver it exactly the way I needed to hear it. There is no way that I would be able to fight this fight with psychological tools alone, and I do not want to turn to medicine unless it is an actual chemical imbalance in my brain, and I am now positive that it is not, it is simply a messed up way of thinking, a messed up set of priorities, and horribly self-centered thinking.

This past week has been amazing. I have not felt overwhelming anxiety, but only the normal, everyday anxiety that everyone experiences. I went in for a job interview and felt anxious, but realized it was just normal nerves and that my thinking was not consumed by “what ifs”. I went to my church’s young adult ministry alone and did not feel anxious, but only a bit awkward since I did not know anyone there and therefore had to sit alone. I have all the tools I could possibly need. I have a new way of thinking that is proven to work by psychology, and by my amazing God. I am sure I can combat this, but not without help from my counselor, and my King.

Anxiety was pulling apart the edges of my relationship, my family, my friendships, and myself. I did not see it at first, but once I realized what was happening it was impossible to overlook, and seemed hopeless to fix. But I am here now, saying it is better. It is not perfect by any means, and I am not cured at all, but I am working through it, and can say with confidence that I will get better. I will live with anxiety for the rest of my life, but it will not rule me forever. I know I will have moments or maybe even weeks or months where it takes over, but I know now that I can come back from it, that I can live my life free of anxiety, and almost be back to the outgoing extroverted little girl who looked at a park full of kids and said “look at all the friends I haven’t met yet!” instead of the girl who sees that same park and listens when her anxiety says, “nope, you can’t do that”.

I have anxiety, but I won’t let that stop me from being a wonderful, functioning human being.

Jaina

Summer 2016

Hello friends! It has been quite a while since I last posted something on here, and I do apologize for that, but I have been having quite the busy summer. I did move back home from college, which took almost a full week to put everything back together, and did involve some rearranging of my room so that it would fit my current needs, and also the added things that I accumulated from "living on my own" for 9 months. I now have my own little desk that we scored at a yard sale for a dirt-cheap price that I can work at, and most importantly do my makeup at. I truly love the time I spend at that desk! I also re-purposed my little bathroom drawer organizer as my bedside table, which got rid of a lot of clutter around my bed. There is also a nice little rug on my floor which makes the room feel all the more inviting!

Despite all the positive changes since I moved home, there have been some negative aspects. I have been noticing myself falling back into old patterns, such as leaving things on the floor for days at a time, laying in bed all day and not getting anything accomplished, procrastinating on things that I need to get done, and the most anti-social of them all, refusing to go out and run errands alone because that feels uncomfortable. I am trying to combat all of these which is extremely difficult, but so far I have seen and felt nothing but positive outcomes and emotions from it all! I am doing my best to force myself to do things that make me uncomfortable socially since I do suffer from a pretty aggressive case of social anxiety despite my years in theatre and band. I struggle to do everyday tasks such as go and pick up some groceries or personal care items that I need by myself, or to go out in public without a friend, or even make eye contact or smile at someone that I see outside without having panic attacks ranging from an increased heart rate to full out not being able to breathe and feeling dizzy and hysteric just from the mere THOUGHT of performing these tasks. So, I have slowly been making myself do uncomfortable things with the idea that one day I will be able to go somewhere alone and ask an associate of a store where something is that I am looking for rather than wandering around the store for an hour looking for it.

I did manage to get a job, and it is working with developmentally disabled children. It is extremely tiring emotionally and physically, and I feel drained after just a few hours of work, but so far has felt okay. I know it is worth it, but it is hard to see when you have to convince yourself that you enjoy your work as you are doing it. As it stands now, this job was just a summer opportunity, but I could do similar work with a different client during the school-year if I so desired. This is something I have to think about, as I am trying to branch out and explore all of my interests to see what I would like to do for the next few years. I have also decided not to go to school this semester (not so much "decided" as "I put off registering for so long since I was so busy that I missed the dates and have no choice but to take a semester off," oops) and to think about what I would like to study, if anything. I am debating on getting a job in cosmetology, specifically makeup artistry, since that is something I could do as a mother and still have time to spend with my kids. That could be a very long time in the future however, so I do not want to base all my decisions solely on how it would work if I was a mother.

I know I keep mentioning on how I had a "busy summer", but have yet to explain why it has been busy, so I will go into moderate detail about that now. At the beginning of summer, I was taking classes for my current job and working on getting everything I needed to be officially "hired". Once I had all that done, I was working almost every day of the week, every week, and exhausting myself doing it. I then attending one of the two TRAC's (Teen Reach Adventure Camp) I had committed to doing over the summer. I only stayed at this first one for three days, but I was a Cousin (counselor) for those three days, which is arguable the most grueling and exhausting role at the camp. I then left for Nebraska the day after getting back from that camp, and was there for my nieces birthday and 4th of July (we ended up staying there almost a full week), before coming back home. I then had two days to unpack and re-pack for the next TRAC, which I stayed at for the full week. I had a few issues that I had to resolve with my work regarding a payroll error, so even during my days "off" I was stressing over how to fix the issue without getting myself or the agency in trouble in any way. I also had a difficult camper for girls camp, so my days were particularly exhausting and long for those three days, and boys camp felt significantly less stressful and tiring. I was sad to go home after camp, but also extremely ready to sleep in my own bed and be on a normal schedule for me. Plus I was getting a bit too much sun for my taste!

Overall, it has been a busy but fun summer, and I am sad to see it ending, but also excited for what the fall has to bring. I am planning a few trips with some of my friends, one for Disneyland while it is all done up for Halloween which will be extremely fun if we can make it work. I have a lot of shopping I need/want to do, and I know it would be healthy for me to go and do it alone, but does anyone actually enjoy shopping alone? I feel like it is always more fun when you have someone along with you. The only exception for me is makeup shopping since I have a passion bordering on obsession with makeup, and could stay in a Sephora swatching and staring at all the makeup for hours on end. However clothes shopping for me is tedious and boring if I do not have someone with me.

Finally, I'm sorry if this post has been all over the place or seemed unstructured. I am a bit scatter-brained lately, and I'm sure when I am more sane I will read over this and groan at how it sounds and maybe even take the time to edit it to perfection, but for now I have proof-read this and it makes sense in my current crazy-head, so I am going to post it. I am sorry for the long absence, but hopefully this made sense enough for you to see that I have been busier than usual. I do plan on posting more, especially as I continue to explore my mind and personality and discover new things about myself. I'm sure I will have some short stories that I feel comfortable posting eventually, I just have to figure out how to get all my stuff off of my old computer so that I do not lose it forever. There just seem to be a lot of little things that I need to get done lately!

If I feel up to it, I will do a full post based on the Nebraska trip, but for now, it's getting a bit late (but I will still stay up for almost 4 more hours), and my brain is fried and struggling to put coherent sentences together. So, goodnight all, and hopefully there are more posts to come sooner, and closer together.

Thank you for putting up with me

Jaina

Figuring Myself Out

I have heard seemingly hundreds of times over the nearly 2 decades I've been on earth that college is the place where you will most discover who you truly are, aside from the first year of marriage and your first time being a parent (although I think those expose more of who you are in a relationship and as a parent rather than who you are as yourself, but that's another post entirely when I reach that point in my life). From my experience, it is definitely true. I have been changing rapidly this year, and figuring out who I am apart from my family's influence, and really turning into the human God truly meant for me to be. I am figuring out what classes I like to take, what I enjoy spending my free time doing, what kinds of people I want to be around, and trying lots of new things that I have never been exposed to before (like Guacamole and Sushi - thanks Joel). It is a little bit of a scary place to be, since I am still not quite sure who I am yet, and it will be even harder to discover this when I move back home, since I am fully expecting my family to be under the impression that I will return in similar form to when I left; and it is not bad that they think this. They do not fully understand just how much I have changed and discovered about myself this semester alone. 

I am currently taking a psychology class, and in it we are learning a lot not only about personalities, but about disorders and how the brain works. Psychology has always been super interesting to me, and the human mind itself has been a long-time fascination of mine, to the point that I seriously contemplated getting into criminal psychology for a season. I decided that seeing the depravity of humans first hand would not be a good career for me, as I plan on being a mother and would like to not have images of humans kidnapping and torturing children for fun because their brain operates differently that others. There is one aspect of psychology that I am very intrigued by at the moment, which we have not yet gone into in depth in class, but glazed over one of the first few weeks, and that is the effect of early-childhood trauma on the brain over a period of time. I have a soft spot in my heart for foster care, and have seen first hand over the course of my entire life (I do not remember a time in my childhood in Iowa where we did not have foster kids in our house) how the children in the system simply behave and think differently than other kids. I would absolutely love to study them and see the effects the trauma has had on them over a period of time, and see what treatment options work best. Now, when I say "I would love to study them," I do not mean that I would delight in their condition; quite the opposite. I hold deep sorrow for what these children go through, and how none of it was there fault but they could do nothing to stop it, and now something that was out of their control, is controlling them. I would love to help them and talk to them and help them understand what makes their brain different and validate the feelings they have. To put it simply, I am rethinking my whole career path, as many college students do in their first year, and thinking about getting into Child Psychology. I do not know if God is planning to put me into a child psychology position in an office setting, within the foster care system, in a school, or if he doesn't have psychology in my future at all, but maybe has me heading towards being a crisis care counselor, but I do know that I feel a strong pull towards this field. I do not want to make any snap decisions, so I plan on taking my final year of general education credits through a community college, perhaps mostly online so I can better get a job, and throwing in a few psychology classes to really get a feel for what direction I will go in. Who knows? Maybe God will pull me into criminal psychology after all! I do know that I have a deep love for children, especially those in the foster care system, and I do know that (although this is such a relative and over-used phrase) I am good with children. This is simply the first part of figuring myself out, and this is mainly through my education and professional life.

I have also been figuring out who I am within my relationship. I do not want to go into detail here simply because I believe a relationship is between the two in it and what goes on, so long as it is not physically or emotionally damaging, is between them. Pure and simple, I do not feel the need to divulge details of my relationship on the internet, so I will glaze over it, just to get the point across of how I am discovering myself. I have never been in a relationship this long, or have had this level of a connection with someone. This comes with its own obstacles and wonderful perks, but it really makes you look at who you are as an individual, and who you are with your partner. Through my relationship, I am discovering more of who I am as an individual, and what effects that has on my relationship, and vice versa. It is a humbling experience, but also a truly exciting one.

Along the lines of "figuring myself out", I took a personality test based on the Myer's Briggs scale (the actual Myer's Briggs scale costs money to take, so I found a free alternative online that uses that same - or similar - scale). Basically, the scale analyzes your personality and places you on a scale, so whether you are more introverted or extroverted, intuitive or observant, thinking or feeling, judging or prospecting, and finally assertive or turbulent. I got INFJ-T, meaning I am Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging, and Turbulent. The website I went through, which is www.16personalities.com, gives you a full run-down of the personality and breaks it up into different categories. Mine was completely spot-on, so I highly recommend you check this out, even if it is just out of curiosity, because it can tell you a lot about yourself that you may not have ever even known. The INFJ personality makes up less than 1% of the population, which makes it the rarest of the 16 personalities. This made me feel a bit weird, as I felt like I was a special little snowflake, but also discouraged because it meant that hardly anyone has ever interacted with people who think and act like me, which makes me think that maybe I am not all that easy to interact and relate with. I have to push past this thinking, as thinking that I am hard to interact with is not going to do me any good, but since I am a little worry-wart that is not going to be an easy task. 

I have also figured out that I have such a strong desire to have my own home to fill with wonderful things and clean and make my own. This is simply not practical for a 19 year old college student, but hey, a girl can dream! I plan on fulfilling this desire by redoing my room when I move back in for the summer, to make it a bit more of who I am now, and make it more inviting (I also want to add a little desk area for me to do my makeup since I enjoy that part of my day so much). I also would like to get a job, or do an internship with a foster care program or organization, a children's hospital or daycare center, or a animal shelter (because the only thing I love more than babies are dogs and cats). I do currently have an opportunity thanks to Joel to work with children, it is just a matter of it actually coming together. I would love to get paid to go do something I enjoy, even if it is simply being the receptionist at a vet's office or animal shelter or child psychiatry office, because I would be making a difference in someone else's life, and I would be getting my foot in the door in the business I most want to get into. 

Writing is no less of a passion now than it has been for the entirety of my life, but the difference now is that I am studying the art of it in my own free time, and taking down ideas and working on a little project of my own that I am pretty excited about. I have been reading through a few of my old short stories and seeing if any inspiration comes from those, or if any of them have the potential to be longer pieces with a little work. Writing is not easy, despite what some may thing, and requires quite a bit of skill aside from talent (talent is something you have naturally and cannot be taught, but skill is something you have to learn and work for), but I am determined to get better and write something I am truly proud of.

Prayers for me right now would be much appreciated, as figuring out who I am is not easy or fun, even if I make it sound that way. It is an emotionally grueling process that sometimes can feel overwhelming and makes me want to give up and just stay the same (although I thrive on change so that would just end up making me even more unhappy). I have been loving my little moments when I get to read, or spend time with Joel, or even enjoy a nice cup of coffee uninterrupted. I do have to work on not letting these quiet, work-less moments overtake my life, turning my day into one unproductive mess, but that's another aspect of working on myself that I am, well, working on! 

Thank you for reading this, and for any prayers or kind thoughts that you send my way. I will do my best to keep you updated as time goes on. Hopefully there will be some lovely animal stories coming up, as it is warming up outside and my momma tortoise just came out of hibernation!! Of course I have to be at home in order to have these stories, but spring break is coming up and then there is the summer, where I will have plenty of time to take Zelda to the dog park and bring Jenna out into the real sun and have her play with her momma. Alright, enough about my animals!!

Thanks for putting up with me,

Jaina