Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
We are fostering two DOGS for a few WEEKS!!!!! Their owners are moving and have to live somewhere temporarily as they look for a house. They have already escaped once and gotten into out bathroom garbage a few times but that is making it even more fun. I love dog mischief. I've started sleeping downstairs because one of the dogs whines all night due to Seperation Anxiety. I am really enjoying hearing them bark in their sleep and watching them twitch their eyes, mouths, and legs as they dream dog dreams.
Happy (Late) Autism Awareness Day! My dad doesn't believe I have it and keeps telling me how I was so confident and brave when I was younger. I don't remember being like that. I got bullied for having friends who were boys. I would cry whenever my church class would sing me and my twin sister happy birthday. The two years I went to school, my twin sister got a B and I convinced myself the teacher mixed up our grades because she couldn't tell us apart. And the other year, I got a B+ and got really, really sad and angry at me and the teacher. I am really bad at speaking (because I am bad with my R's and I am not intellectually good with the spoken word.) I remember one time when I was at my family reunion and my grandma was walking around in sneakers. She turned one way with one foot but didn't do the same with the other foot. It bothers me even to this day. My family doesn't know about most of my struggles, though, because I am just now starting to verbally tell them because I am more self-aware due to learning about AS.
I was really excited to start writing but I am still as bad at telling stories as always. (That doesn't mean what it means in my head...)
There is this one girl at my church who compliments my hair whenever I'm not wearing a hat. She doesn't know that I wear hats because I cannot stop pulling out my hair. I love her intentions but she doesn't know how it's making me more self-conscious which makes me pull out my hair more. One time, when I got back from church after she complimented my hair, I was changing in my room and I started stimming and it grew into me silently screaming at her in my head explaining my Trichotillomania. It's a shame I can't explain it to her in person.
I might write a short letter explaining my AS and Trichotillomania and have my sister (who is the youth leader of our group) read it out loud for the class so they better understand, but I don't want to seem rude and selfish and attention-seeking. If I ever get to writing the letter, I might post it here for feedback.
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Look at what my best friend did with my picture!
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We all have 24 hours in a day. How we spend these hours is important. Watching a little bit of a video about how sitting affects us made me aware of how much sitting and laying down I do. Gonna have to work on that.Your turn. Tell me another truth.
I wanted to mention something about feeling the need to get others to understand. I have a chronic disease that occasionally flares up and when it does I can rapidly lose a lot of weight. People who don’t know me well or who don’t know I’m sick will say, wow you look great! Or, have you been dieting? I know they mean well. It’s not intended to be insensitive, But more than that, I actually don’t care that they say it or whether they understand; I don’t need for them to understand what I’m dealing with. For one thing, they really can’t understand unless they are experiencing what I’m experiencing and the other thing is, I am the one living with it so whether they get it or not had no literal impact good or bad. I don’t want or need their sympathy, I don’t want or need them to feel badly for me, and I surely don’t want them treating me differently from anyone else. My job is to take care of myself so I can live in the world outside of my own small self, so I can be good friends to others, be a caring family member, be a supportive coworker etc.
One of things that comes with growth and self awareness is recognizing being self-conscious has nothing to do with others. That’s why it’s “self” conscious. It’s the issue of the person experiencing it, not anyone else’s. In my opinion, the real work is less about getting others to understand and more about learning to be comfortable navigating a world that isn’t always going to understand you or even at times not really care because people are dealing with their own issues, hang ups, insecurities, problems etc.
Sometimes we just have to accept not everyone I’d gonna get us all the time and be ok with that.