Good morning everyone!
Good morning sunshine!
This is my first scheduled post because I know I'll be too busy to write something in the morning. As you read this I will have dealt with postman anxiety, found the shoe my daughter hid under the sofa approximately 10 minutes before we need to leave for school, wrestled with the dogs for the umpteenth time because they demand to spend every waking second outside, chasing each other. I've tried not to throw up 10 times due to anxiety and I've probably peed about 100 times because anxiety likes to mess with the workings down below. All this in 90 minutes.
Phew!
Anxiety takes up so much of the morning doesn't it? Does this sound slightly familiar? No wonder living with a mental illness is so exhausting. See, when you write it down like that, from the moment you wake up and within the first hour of waking, your brain and your body are going a million miles an hour. Even if you stay in bed for that hour, it's still a whole 60 minutes of fight or flight and adrenaline pumping through your body.
In those first 60 minutes of waking it really can feel like you've run a marathon, mentally. I remember the first time I really experienced morning anxiety, I'd been anxious in the mornings before but this was different.
I remember waking up and it felt like I'd run into a wall. I remember sitting bolt up right in bed and pretty much throwing myself out of the covers, down the stairs and to the front door while praying there was no post that day.
Damn, there's letters on the floor. Oh no, there's an important looking brown envelope, oh no, there's two.
I remember ripping open the brown envelopes in a mad panic while quickly scanning for the words 'prison, jail, police, benefits stopped, bailiff, court'.
Phew, none of those words, we're OK today.
I went back upstairs and perched myself on the edge of the sofa checking for police walking past my door ready to arrest me or take my daughter away, I had PND (post natal depression) at the time too on top of the anxiety and depression.
Bang! Oh my God, was that the door? Someone's at the door! Please make them go away! Oh, it was a car driving over a loose grid in the road. I can stop crying now.
This was literally my life for 2 years. This was my routine every single day I woke up, and this was happening in the first 30 minutes of waking up. Heaven forbid if the phone rang too! By the time midday came, I was so exhausted that I'd want to fall asleep. This would also kick off the anxiety again just in case I was asleep and the police broke down my door. My PND made me literally terrified of the police and social services taking my daughter away. My daughter was absolutely fine I have to add, and social services or the police have never been involved in our lives. However, I felt she could be taken away from me at any second because I had depression, I would self harm and I had anxiety.
Anxiety is a bitch. An extremely horrible, back stabbing, abusive bitch. It literally feels like of wants to destroy you in the slowest possible way you can think of. For me, it was like watching a horror movie, my literal body was in the film while my 'self' was screaming at the TV to "RUN!"
No matter how anxiety manifests in you, you have a 100% success rate for pulling through it. You feel the cloud of anxiety every single day, yet you're still here. You still open your umbrella when that cloud rains.
I don't care if it takes you 1 hour, 4 hours or an entire day to feel a little more human, you've got through it before and you're still here. You should feel proud of that, you've been through so much stress, panic and God knows what else during the day, be proud of yourself, please?
One day, your mornings and days will feel good and you wont feel the panic as soon as you wake up. Take it one step at a time, and don't worry if you stumble and that cloud catches up. You open that glittery gold umbrella and you step out into the rain.
This is my first scheduled post because I know I'll be too busy to write something in the morning. As you read this I will have dealt with postman anxiety, found the shoe my daughter hid under the sofa approximately 10 minutes before we need to leave for school, wrestled with the dogs for the umpteenth time because they demand to spend every waking second outside, chasing each other. I've tried not to throw up 10 times due to anxiety and I've probably peed about 100 times because anxiety likes to mess with the workings down below. All this in 90 minutes.
Phew!
Anxiety takes up so much of the morning doesn't it? Does this sound slightly familiar? No wonder living with a mental illness is so exhausting. See, when you write it down like that, from the moment you wake up and within the first hour of waking, your brain and your body are going a million miles an hour. Even if you stay in bed for that hour, it's still a whole 60 minutes of fight or flight and adrenaline pumping through your body.
In those first 60 minutes of waking it really can feel like you've run a marathon, mentally. I remember the first time I really experienced morning anxiety, I'd been anxious in the mornings before but this was different.
I remember waking up and it felt like I'd run into a wall. I remember sitting bolt up right in bed and pretty much throwing myself out of the covers, down the stairs and to the front door while praying there was no post that day.
Damn, there's letters on the floor. Oh no, there's an important looking brown envelope, oh no, there's two.
I remember ripping open the brown envelopes in a mad panic while quickly scanning for the words 'prison, jail, police, benefits stopped, bailiff, court'.
Phew, none of those words, we're OK today.
I went back upstairs and perched myself on the edge of the sofa checking for police walking past my door ready to arrest me or take my daughter away, I had PND (post natal depression) at the time too on top of the anxiety and depression.
Bang! Oh my God, was that the door? Someone's at the door! Please make them go away! Oh, it was a car driving over a loose grid in the road. I can stop crying now.
This was literally my life for 2 years. This was my routine every single day I woke up, and this was happening in the first 30 minutes of waking up. Heaven forbid if the phone rang too! By the time midday came, I was so exhausted that I'd want to fall asleep. This would also kick off the anxiety again just in case I was asleep and the police broke down my door. My PND made me literally terrified of the police and social services taking my daughter away. My daughter was absolutely fine I have to add, and social services or the police have never been involved in our lives. However, I felt she could be taken away from me at any second because I had depression, I would self harm and I had anxiety.
Anxiety is a bitch. An extremely horrible, back stabbing, abusive bitch. It literally feels like of wants to destroy you in the slowest possible way you can think of. For me, it was like watching a horror movie, my literal body was in the film while my 'self' was screaming at the TV to "RUN!"
No matter how anxiety manifests in you, you have a 100% success rate for pulling through it. You feel the cloud of anxiety every single day, yet you're still here. You still open your umbrella when that cloud rains.
I don't care if it takes you 1 hour, 4 hours or an entire day to feel a little more human, you've got through it before and you're still here. You should feel proud of that, you've been through so much stress, panic and God knows what else during the day, be proud of yourself, please?
One day, your mornings and days will feel good and you wont feel the panic as soon as you wake up. Take it one step at a time, and don't worry if you stumble and that cloud catches up. You open that glittery gold umbrella and you step out into the rain.
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