Saturday, October 5, 2013

The Mind Body Connection

This past week was a real pain in the ass. I reached a critical point in my anxiety where my mind basically took control of my body. Aside from feeling sick and not being able to stay hydrated. I had head to foot muscle tension, tightness, pain...basically they were hard as a rock and tightening everywhere. From my legs, to my back to my head to my chest (making it hard to breath), to my throat (making it hard to swallow.)  To say that it sucked doesn't give it justice. I'm 90% sure this was a result of the past months activities and is proof that healing or sickness really does begin and end in the mind. My doctor believes it is possibly Myopathy, which doesn't dismiss the fact that it was brought on by chronic anxiety.  She also mentioned Neuropathy, Fibromyalgia, Rheumatoid Arthritis, other Autoimmune Disorders, and My Thyroid. All of which, in my opinion, can be exasperated by chronic stress. In any case, blood work is being done to at least find out once and for all what is going on. I tend to link everything to anxiety, and then once in a while I will think..."but shit...what if it's not?" I have real physical pain here. What if it's something else?  What if it's something that may even produce feelings of anxiety?  I try to keep these thoughts at bay because it ends up becoming a "What came first? The chicken or the egg?" scenario. So hopefully, answers will be on the way soon.

Ironically during this pain in the ass week, I was really attempting to help myself, or at least help my body. Green drinks, eating well, Yoga, walking. Perhaps I sent my own body into shock and it was all, "what the fuck!?  Where's my cake and Starbucks?"  And then it just got so pissed it just decided to attack me. That's a real possibility, so I've slowed it down a bit. Still marching forward with what's good for me, just doing it at a slower pace, to maybe let my body acclimate.  Time will tell, I suppose. 

As for my mind...still crazy. I'm at the point where I almost need to shut it off. I think that's the only way to regain some balance and good physical health. And that means medicine. UGH. This the exact point I get to every time I decide to go back on the one pill a day regimen. I know I'm better off not resisting but I still can't help but hate the fact that I can't be like other people. That I just can't "calm down". That I can't "relax" and "stop thinking" and "stop worrying" and just be fucking normal for Christ sakes! Yeah. I hate that. And by normal I just mean...the NORM. That baseline place where people are people and they get to have good days and they get to have boring unimportant days and they also get to have stressful days when they are called for. I want that. I mostly only have the latter even when it is not called for.

On the family front, I have still done nothing. I'm still angry so I suppose that means I care? But I'm also in a delete and repeat mood. This can be a dangerous mood for me because it's when I tend to just cut ties. I will try to rationalize it so that it makes sense to other people. I also have this sudden urge to purge my facebook friends as well. It's almost like cleaning house. Most people hate to clean house, but ever since I was a child I actually liked to clean and organize. In fact, when I had to eat all my dinner, I would imagine the food was my room and I had to clean it. The food alone did nothing to entice the eating. The cleaning of the plate was my motivation. Clean Plate. Clean Slate? I feel the same way about a lot of things in my life. I hate too much stuff. I purge often. And I feel the same way about people in my life. This may seem cold. Maybe even mean? But it's not. There really is no bad intention here. It just is. Where the rest of the world (generalising here) seems to get off on having the most friends and knowing a lot of people and adding more and more people to their lives or their lists...I am the opposite. More people always seems to equal more stress. More unknowns. More interference. More pain. More disappointment. This might not be true for everyone, or maybe it is, but they have these magical things called coping skills? Not sure. For me, though, less is more. And the older I get the more I'm realising this and the more power I seem to be giving myself to make my life more like the way I want it. I remember riding in the back of the car on the highway as a child. I would always imagine myself jumping out of the car and running into the woods and staying there and living there forever. In high school, when I read, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, I was blown away. I thought it was the most fantastic brilliant thing in the world. So, this desire for less people isn't anything new. What's new is, for the first time in my life, I have no desire to pretend to fit in with the masses. I have no desire to pretend to be more social than I actually am. I have even less desire for approval. This is a good thing, because I'm getting very little approval from people in my life and expect to get even less as I continue this journey. This can also be considered a good thing because they are, in a sense, weeding themselves out before I have to do it. 

This past month isn't one I'd want to relive by any means but I did learn a few things. I learned the most important thing I have to do is to take care of myself. I learned that I get to put myself first and deserve consideration from the people in my life. I learned that if I don't get that consideration or respect or honesty then they don't have to be a part of my life. I learned that I have a choice. Not in the sense that "I have a choice to make", but that I have a CHOICE. I get to choose who I want to invest my time in and give my love to. And I get to make these choice without guilt, without remorse, without regret. I get to make choices that are good for ME and I also get to be happy about that. 

Hope, who is signing off now before my body catches up with my mind...


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