Anxiety

God, I hate anxiety. I sincerely believe that panic and anxiety can, at times, be more crippling than depression. I tend to swing back and forth between severe depression and severe anxiety. My depression is treated, my anxiety is not. Rarely do my anxiety and depression co-exist at the same time and so I've been told, that is why it it difficult to treat my anxiety symptoms.

I'm on the anxiety upswing right now. I wake up at night in a cold sweat with my heart racing. My brain quickly follows their lead and my thoughts start spooling up without me knowing how they will unwind. I can't stop it. I lay there awake until I am sure that my pounding heart is going to wake up my husband.

So I get up.

I clean, I read, I sew, I crochet, I play with the dog, I watch TV, I write... We have the cleanest house on the block. We have a maid and in my worked up state, I retrace her steps.

I'm not bipolar. I've been down that road with one too many shrinks and I am confident that the last one was correct.

I don't handle stress well. Actually... let me correct that. I don't handle stress at all; I stuff it. Eventually I run out of places to stuff my emotions and it explodes. At that point, I'm either depressed or anxious as hell. It is miserable. At times I feel paralyzed while sinking in quicksand when I am on anxiety overdrive. That is where I am now.

Like I said, my anxiety is not treated with medication. I self-medicate instead. Last night I washed my antidepressant pills down with vodka. It that isn't the picture of health, I don't know what is...

I'll be OK, I always am. Despite how this all sounds, I am attempting to deal with my anxiety in healthier ways. I will go to therapy this week and actually talk; I will also write more. The weather is nice and hubby suggested, as he watched the vodka/pill display last night, that we start taking a walk in the evenings. I can do that too.