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...
This covidic era is still scaring the unholies out of me. I'm still not properly germaphobic, but the politics remain bewildering and illogical to me. Without the three young orphans in need of healing and socialization, I would probably be even more socially distanced and isolated than the age peer friends whom I haven't heard from since mid 2020 when I started reacting badly to reading about their tele-doc and zoom adventures. Sorry, friends, but I need a cup of libation and indecently exposed smiles to listen to those dramas.
The orphans seem to be responding well to the new and long over-due social opportunities. This past 5 day weekend was filled with childish joy, complete with up close and personal child's play and sporting events. Hubs and I are exhausted, but the children fell asleep contented and flashing indecently exposed smiles. It feels likely that they will awake refreshed and ready for unmasked academia when I wake them 45 minutes from now.
I am increasingly able to look past the remaining maskites and set aside my worries of yet another global shutdown, but I'm only setting them aside. They remain a bubbling anxiety cauldron. I still can't look at a mask, much less see "eye smiles" or scowls, but my paranoia imagines there are far more "eye scowls" than smiles floating over those masks. Just psychotically imagining. . . All this covidic exposure therapy has yet to make a dent in my mask phobia.
Today's meditation read from "Hope for Today" resonates loudly in my efforts to protect the children from my strictly personal covidic paranoia by encapsulating and leaving the covidic anxieties withithin my therapy support network so that I can focus on the currently available unmasked Kid World.
Begin quote
When I think of boundaries, it helps if I think of a castle in a lake. Boundaries are the drawbridge connecting the castle with the world. Usually the drawbridge is down and people can walk freely back and forth. However, when danger is sensed, the drawbridge rises to protect the castle.
to protect myself from the dangers of my dysfunctional family, I shut down and kept my drawbridge closed to guard my feelings and thoughts. Eventually, my castle grew musty and foul inside. When I reached psychotherapy, I couldn't distinguish between real and imagined threats. By listening to therapy peers share, I learned how to recognize danger signals in the behavior of others and how to respond appropriately.
On occasion, the danger signals are not clear. Sometimes what I perceive as a threat is something I've conjured up in my own mind. If I immediately shut down my feelings in reaction, I usually end u hurting myself or someone else. In the end I mght lose an opportunity to grow or a chance to love and be loved.
With the help of my higher power and the Serenity Prayer, I've learned to distinguish between real and imagined threats. I've learned to respect others' boundaries. I'm also able to discern when it's wiser to remain open to someone I love and trust even when I want to close up out of fear. I remind myself that I can't experience love, joy, and trust, and completely abandon myself to my higher power if I can't risk feeling the other extremes of sadness, hurt and fear.
Thought for the Day
Knowing when to open and when to close my boundaries is a learning experience.
"Boundaries are flexible, changeable, removable, so it's up to me to know how open or closed I'll be at any given time." ~Courage to Change
End quote
Just giving myself the reinforcement of sharing.
For what it's worth, the children don't seem to have been too affected by my mask phobia. They seem to treat strangers in the stores, etc., the same, masked or unmasked. I have yet to be able to join in the mask muffled banter, but I am increasingly able to enjoy their pleasure in the masked encounters.
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I haven't written in my diary on my computer since May because I thought that my computer was dying. I got away from writing but my computer is hanging in there. I think that I will start writing in it again. It's so therapeutic.
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First, I hope everyone is doing well, and continuing to fight that good fight! Keep up the great work on yourselves; I'm rooting for all of you!So, I started doing therapy at the beginning of the year, when I was in my most depressed state, but with my therapist, I made big changes and steps in the right direction. But, over a month ago, she couldn't take my insurance anymore, and I had to stop...
It kind of makes me think of seeing drawbridges in the more historically accurate sense of not slamming shut, nice and flush with those ramparts, but more at like a 45-degree angle. Enough to keep anyone from getting in, but not hermetically sealing away the outside world. Lower it a bit more and you could venture out onto the bridge and have a shouted conversation with those you are trying to keep out (I use "you" here in the all-compassing pronoun sense, not a particular "you").
Like all things, boundaries are good in moderation.
As masks settle into personal choice and fashion statements, I find my mask phobia settling into hope of closing the social distances between the two sides of the masked divide. The hearing issues which make lip reading essential to communication keep my drawbridge at your slippery 45 degree slope, but I'm losing the hermetic seal.
Can you tell I love your analogy? I have been thinking in terms of sneaking peeks over the ramparts, but methinks I'm going to give your analogy a twirl and see how she whirls. My imagining has already added considerable snot and spit to make that 45 degree slope more slippery. Or should I imagine ice? I get quite frigid when I am drawing boundaries. Frozen snot and spit?
Another benefit of being precariously perched on an inclined bridge is that it's soooo much harder to throw stones. Something I find myself all too willing to do when tucked comfortably up on wall.
I remind myself often that when I point a finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointing back at me. One of my more effective meditations is where I put a picture of whomever I am angry with, point my finger and fire away. It helps me focus the issues. I then lift my hand to look at the 3 fingers pointing back at me. That is where I most often find the solutions to whatever is pissing me off.