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...
So, I know a major trigger for me. It's noisy neighbors. My husband took me out for a lovely Valentine's dinner last night. I was really happy and we had a great time, but when we got back to the house there were about ten cars parked in front of our neighbor's house and I thought "Oh no!"
It seems like they have people over every weekend. They get super drunk and stand around their fire pit laughing and "woo-ing" until two or three in the morning. Right now I can tune it out somewhat, but I'm really worried about the summer time when all our windows are open.
There's just something about neighbors making noise that stresses me to the breaking point. I feel invaded by the noise. On top of that, I'm extremely non-confrontational. I'm scared to death of ending up in a conflict with neighbors if I confront them and that fear outweighs my hatred of the noise.
My husband is going to talk to them but the whole things still stresses me out.
Just need to vent a little. I don't know if I can ever get to the point where I can tolerate this kind of thing. I wish I could live on my own little island...
It seems like they have people over every weekend. They get super drunk and stand around their fire pit laughing and "woo-ing" until two or three in the morning. Right now I can tune it out somewhat, but I'm really worried about the summer time when all our windows are open.
There's just something about neighbors making noise that stresses me to the breaking point. I feel invaded by the noise. On top of that, I'm extremely non-confrontational. I'm scared to death of ending up in a conflict with neighbors if I confront them and that fear outweighs my hatred of the noise.
My husband is going to talk to them but the whole things still stresses me out.
Just need to vent a little. I don't know if I can ever get to the point where I can tolerate this kind of thing. I wish I could live on my own little island...
Anger scares the crap out of me and when people are drunk I am always afraid that their anger will come through. I have been able to trace this back to my childhood (as I said above) so I have worked with those child parts who were so scared at the time. I have held them and explained to them that anger can no longer hurt them. That they can put a protective bubble around them that will keep all that noise and anger away from them.
Are you able to trace this trigger back to your childhood? If so, that's the place to start healing this trigger. Work with those parts of you who were so scared and let them know they are safe now. This process does take time so be as patient with it as you can. It does work though. I promise you if you stick with it, it does work.
Take care
it is soooo not good for your stress levels....summer--think noisy air conditioner in the bedroom--and ear plugs.....
@Lucky, I don't know why this is such a trigger for me, other than hating conflict and being sensitive to noise. My mom is the same way I am, so our house was pretty quiet when I was growing up. Maybe it's the opposite for me in that I was never desensitized to noise. I can't stand having the television on for no reason, either.
My anxiety makes me a constant worrier. I always leap to the worst case scenario... in this case, I assume we will come into conflict with our neighbors and they will act even more obnoxious for our having complained and we will have to either endure it for the next two years or move.
I am going to try to think about one thing at a time, though. First my husband will talk to the guy at work and we'll go from there. Hopefully he will be reasonable. If worse comes to worst, we can call the police, I guess, but I hope it doesn't come to that!
I'm still working on being assertive so I haven't tried to talk to them about it yet. I mentioned it to my therapist and we agreed to wait until I completed more anger-management therapy. It's all for the best. I don't want to hurt my neighbor.
Your reaction is completely normal because they "do" invade your life.
I always screen out noise as best as I can.
Oh yea, adding white noise is great, fans of any kind and CD's, I pods all add a great layer against noise pollution.
Noise pollution is just as serious as any other pollution.
Most people just do not care.