Hey Guys!
I know I’m late…again. In this week's ridiculous saga, Baby M and L had croup, both requiring trips to the ER. They have since had their follow ups and although they both still have a lingering cough, they are on the right track back to good health! When we decided to move from FL to Colorado, I’ll be honest, the only big worry I had was leaving the family we had in Florida for our new adventure. I didn’t even stop to consider the fact that the climate and altitude may have an effect on all of us and our health in the beginning. Which it very much did. Ricky and I have especially seen the change and struggle during our workouts. We cannot push ourselves –yet–like we did in the hot steamy sauna of central Florida.
As of today, we’ve been in Colorado for a month! In this short month, L turned 4, M has been living his best life getting outside and exploring. He’s found and identified tracks. He’s found and identified scat (because what 5 year old isn’t obsessed with poop?!). Baby M is just coming into her own. She’s talking a lot more and super active. Calling all the shots. We’ve been to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo twice and had a blast and it’s quite the workout. We’ve been to Garden of the Gods three times, and North Cheyenne Canon Park to see some waterfalls. All of these are must do’s if you visit the Colorado Springs area!
Surprisingly enough, for the first couple weeks, my anxiety was what I would consider “in check”. It was still very much present but it wasn’t as bad as it normally is. I was kind of surprised and maybe chalked some of it up to just the openness you feel out here and in the mountains. Although we live in a very residential area, surrounded by homes, I don’t feel the same closure and suffocation I felt in our neighborhood in Florida. When I look out my window here, I can see for miles. Hell, I can see to the very top of a 14,000+ft mountain! I watch the sun come up on the mountains and set behind them. But as we all know, changing your location does not heal you. Does not change your mindset. Does not get rid of your mental load. I’ve been still trying to do the inner work required to stop my anxiety from calling the shots day to day. It’s been harder to focus on myself while trying to get my family acclimated to a new state while also managing sick kids and getting sick myself. But now that we’re all feeling better and on the mend, my anxiety has started to come in hot. While extremely frustrating, it’s time (as always) to get back to working on myself. Focusing on my mental health for my sake and the sake of my beautiful family – they deserve nothing but a happy healthy me.
I’ve been reading and am almost finished with “The Untethered Soul” by Michael A. Singer. A lot of the book has really resonated with me but as I was reading today, there was an example that really stuck out and changed the way I viewed my anxiety. A little more than halfway through the book, he gives an example about building a house in a sunlit field and closing yourself in. Once you close yourself in this dark dark house, you have to find your own way to create light. Even though light is shining all around you outside your house. How the walls of your house keep you trapped inside the darkness while you scramble to create your own light. Your walls are nothing but thoughts and boundaries you have built for yourself that keep you trapped in the darkness when freedom and light are literally just waiting and shining on the other side. It’s up to you to address those walls and boundaries, why you built them, and to “knock them down” head on. Prove to yourself that they're just restricting thoughts that you’ve created for yourself based on your own past experiences. After reading this I tried to think about how I can apply this to my daily routine.
So what did I come up with? Lots of anxiety management is trial and error. Being the impatient person that I am, I hate this. I can’t stand how slow the progress is. But such is life for an impatient person with a heavy mental load LOL. What I’ve decided to do is sit and write out what I think my walls and fears are. So far, I have a bulleted list with 4 walls. What I’m going to continue to do is write out “solutions” for these – which there probably are none because they’re so vague and so out of my own control. I’m hoping the process of doing this will help me realize that there’s nothing to be done. Yes, these terrible things can happen but there is no way for me to control whether or not they’re going to happen. And in the meantime? I’m spending my time thinking and worrying about these things instead of being present and enjoying my life.
What I want for myself in the future: I’d like to really work through my past with a focus on the events that still affect my life today. I want to work on addressing the why’s and understanding why certain things make me anxious and how to manage that when it happens. I have come up with a few techniques to stop anxiety attacks (although it doesn’t always help 100%) when they happen but I’m also noticing that anxiety evolves just as quickly as I do. I’ve managed to stop the dizzy spells right at their start and I was feeling really good about myself for that. Then BOOM! Now my anxiety presents in tingling and heaviness on my left side which is wildly scary when it happens and often causes me to spiral. So here I am, trying to talk myself out of those attacks now and wondering what this crazy anxiety B has in store for me next.
In the last month, we have done so much exploring and learning in our new surroundings. The amount of questions that M and L have asked us about the landscape or wildlife and we have no idea most of the time. Needless to say, we’ve been doing a lot of Googling.
Keep working on yourselves. It’s so important to focus on yourself. But I don’t mean “treat yourself” I mean really take care of yourself. Go exercise, eat right, get sunshine, spend time with people who fill your soul, read books, learn, grow. Yes obviously eating ice cream and other treats can make you feel good, but that’s a temporary fix. Let's put in the time to do the work so that we don’t backtrack. I don’t have the answers. Obviously if I did, I wouldn’t be struggling with this anxiety the way that I am. But I am thinking out loud here and trying to find different ways to help myself. Give yourself some grace and allow yourself to try and fail. Just know you aren’t alone in what you’re going through and that everyone is working on themselves one way or another. Even all those people you see on social media that look and act like they have it all together!
Keep working, my friends.
-A
I actually found the same thing when we moved—the first couple weeks you readjust & get settled…& then your mental “stuff” is there again. But we’re working through it, girl! Self-talking our way back up is so vital…glad you’re doing lots of the hard work it takes 💗