Today was the last full day of our Cali vacation, and we're flying home this evening. It’s been wonderful. I’ve collected dozens of photos and amazing memories. Today I even did a little shopping up in the Ventura area, we watched the sunset, explored the canyons and ate dinner at a New Zealand-themed restaurant.
My anxiety though has been building. I’m actually becoming more aware of my body and my own anxiety and rhythms. This is still completely new to me even though it's been three years from the first time Sister Gee told me I needed to start doing breath prayers and meditating. I didn't understand it then and my sloppy (and mildly resistive) practicing has probably moved me from preschool to kindergarten, but that's about it.
When I took the MMPI test in 2016, the diagnosis surprised me: Generalized Anxiety Disorder, PTSD, Depression. Anxiety? Me? But I don't have panic attacks anymore. That was my general feeling at the time.
It's taken this long to realize how normalized anxiety is for me. This feels like my general approach to life, the patina over all my thoughts and days. I would say especially in the last three months, this has been surprising to discover, something I think people around me have known for years. With that awareness, I've then taken a new look at some practices to move from that space into something healthier.
Changing from an anxious posture has surprisingly meant I now have boundaries. Not so much focusing that on toxic people or situations, just boundaries with myself and more self-awareness. The lines of my life have been very fluid. I morph and adapt to any situation I'm in without realizing I do it. I try and be all things to all people, usually to my detriment.
When I finally crashed in 2016, this was really at the bottom of it all. I strongly felt that no matter what I did to protect myself, life would continue to grab me and require me to just keep giving more to situations, people and organizations I didn't truly want to invest in. I felt like a whore.
It's hard to say no to something and yes to other things if you don't 1) Have an identity and 2) Love yourself. It's impossible really. So Sister Gee and Queen Kay wisely direct their clients to learn to love themselves first, practice mindfulness, connection to the divine, self-care. They don't start with a complex unraveling of your childhood. The foundation is a healthy understanding of who you are, a sense of love of yourself and love from the divine. How wise this is and also I think, probably a somewhat radical approach.
This has taken me literally years to believe, practice and accept as the foundation for all self-health efforts. This wasn't what my intellectual-leaning brain and orientation expected so I've had to really trust them and take the tiniest of baby steps to explore a different way of healing. Now these many years later, I'm finally a believer.
As a result, when I feel anxious, I actually know how to check in with myself and with my body and then act accordingly. I don't lash out at someone near me or drop into self-loathing, my two standby activities when I felt stressed and didn't understand why.
So this evening I tried to check in with myself to try and understand where the anxiety is coming from. I realized that I didn't have much alone and downtime this trip. We were staying with friends the entire time which was amazing, but also not reflective of the life rhythms we have anymore.
I also have anxiety about my mother and still some weird occasional anxiousness about KT'S upcoming wedding. Those have been in play this trip as well.
I don't know quite what to do yet when that happens. I move to sadness and a feeling of helplessness pretty quickly. I'm still learning.
With some freckles on my face, we're heading back north tomorrow. I'll be glad to be home, but not surprisingly, I feel in a place where I'm learning and growing but don't feel solid yet in how to approach these things that come up. I'm in some kind of inbetween land I guess and just believing more will be revealed.