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...
I believe my little ship of fools is holding steady through the Corona-laced back-to-school experience, along with the string of 2nd year trauma anniversaries of the storm season which brought our motley crew together. The full spectrum of human emotions is running high, but we are holding steady through the stormy sees. Punny misspell intended.
This morning's read from "Meditations for People Who Worry" seems especially pertinent and worthy of reinforcing with this sharing.
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Bad Moods
Borrow trouble for yourself, if that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbors. ~Rudyard Kipling
Did you ever think that worry is like an infectious, contagious disease? No one is immune and there is no known vaccination.
Rarely do we realize how much our moods affect those around us. Even if the people in our lives have good boundaries and are sane enough not to get all enmeshed in our moods, at the very best, we are no fun to be around when we persist in worry, and gloom and doom.
It's okay to be in a bad mood. All of us are in a bad mood sometimes. No one can be "up" all the time. We don't have to go around like Pollyanna, cheering everyone up. However, when we are in a bad mood, it's important to admit it, own the mood. Then we can warn those close to us that this is our mood and we are working with it. The mood doesn't have anything to do with them. This kind of "warning device" gives others a chance to back off gracefully and gives us a chance to have the time we need to work with ourselves. This approach is not only very efficient, it's very sane.
My bad moods are for me to work with. Not for others to deal with.
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Note to self: Own your moods, wherever they may fall in the human emotional spectrum. Remember that emotions are an endlessly shifting river. Whatever the mood, this too, shall pass.
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It's going to get hotter here with Thursday being the hottest. It's noon and 75f feels more like 80 or more.I've been cleaning up the deck in this morning and cleaning the windows outside. Then I cut up a pallet in half, I've decided to call it quits now because I went a bit light headed. Joanne, some drugs we take have an effect on us in the heat, I know a couple of mine do, maybe yours...
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Hey All...I hope that you have a lovely, peaceful beginning of your weekI have a bunch of chores that need doing but may put them off til tomorrow and just hang out with my landlord/roomie todayWhat about you?...Anything special going on?Have a great day and take good care of you!!..Xo
I initially thought it was corny. But it’s a concept I still apply even though I no longer work at that organization. If I feel a little snarky, uneasy, etc, I’ll check myself by seeing where am on the mood elevator. Really helps me manage myself so others aren’t paying the price on those days I have a crappy state of mind.
Whatever the mood of the day, taking ownership of my own mood helps me manage the mood while encouraging me to be respectful of other people's moods.
My most useful live support groups focus on specific topics far more than the continual retelling of trauma tales and generic advice-giving. The group dialogs are then freer to look for multiple ways to use and/or customize specific tools.
The more personal specifics and advice-seeking work far better when I keep it strictly personal and smaller groups. Personally, I seldom tell my trauma tales to more than one person at a time. Some things never will be ready for prime time.
I, too, start holding on to the pragmatic when my moods rapid cycling, Mark. I kinda see my grounding exercises, et al, as an extension of that natural instinct.
I find the elevator analogy both helpful and amusing. My daughter likes to say she is on a hellavator when she's feeling particularly beat down. But being able to say to co-workers, "my emotional elevator is in the basement today" seems like a light way of letting people know where I am.
My standard reaction to the elevator analogies is, "Some days you get the elevator, some days you get the shaft."
Then I do therapy exercise to get my Inner Doomsayer back in her cage. Whatever measure or analogy I use for the job, a running inventory of my moods and conditions is extremely helpful in managing my symptoms.
Am I remembering right that you just got the youngest off to college? If so, does that put the eldest in the thick of establishing a life for herself? Did you know that humans are the only species on the planet that allow their off-spring to return to the nest?
Sigh. . . I hate admitting that my mother was ever right, but she hit the nail on the head with, "Little ones, little heartaches. Big ones, big heartaches."
and no response. I guess my crazy was not their crazy at the moment--so instead of telling them about the 50 places I had just heard about--I just told them not to drive into standing water....that was the best I could manage--so yeah, still working on keeping my worries to myself! (and no major flooding...lol)
I got a grin out of the flash flood warnings. That is precisely the sort of alert I would issue on my bad days. Could it be an illusion generated from all those repressed tears? Prolly closer to Chicken Little running around the farm crying, "The sky is falling! ! !"
My wife and I firmly believe she is doing the right thing and have all kinds of confidence that things will work out for the best, but we're working with a teenager trying to move into adulthood while following a path that has diverged from what her friends are doing. Feeling her pain and fear... knowing that we all have to go through these things and that our job is to support her, not do it for her... and watching her suffer while working through all of this has been, well, hard as a diamond on the mohs scale. But, we're muddling through.