Too Many Chips

OK, so when my anxiety was at its height, spiralling out of control, a typical day often started like this:

*BANG* rude awakening – heart pumping, something jumping – did the frantic dream I was having rudely awaken me or the excessive thumping in my chest? A hot flush would start at the nape of my neck, crawl down my back and creep around so I felt actual sweat pool in my excuse for a cleavage. Brain frazzled – how much sleep had I had? Thoughts kicked in - I remember waking after falling asleep (again) on the sofa – hours after my husband had traipsed upstairs. Did I finish the glass of red? What was it we were ‘watching’ before I sunk into the sofa? Did I wake three or four times in the night? Did I text anyone in that late-night slumber, fuelled by a couple or three glasses of red? Did I comment inappropriately on Instagram/ Twitter/ Facebook/ the kids rugby WhatsApp group? First worries of the day firmly cemented and I hadn’t even opened my eyes.

As I scrambled to reach for the phone, the rising heat in my body and tightness of my chest would kick start my day. I had to reassure myself that I hadn’t actually made any social media cock ups – frantically poring over last night’s posts, my mind would begin to focus on the day ahead. The mental check lists of what I had to do became increasingly overwhelming. The big scary ‘to do’ lists weren’t bothering me – work was relatively straight forward and I wasn’t one to fixate on world-wide problems. It was the small, mundane things. Knowing I was probably going to panic in Tesco if I couldn’t find something, or if the checkout girl went too quick so I couldn’t pack into appropriate bags. The fear that my car may make that funny noise or have a warning light on; the boiler may make that sound again which meant no hot water; the sigh my husband made was a sign he was bored of me; the tummy ache I had was cancer and not overindulgence. Worry, fret, worry, think, unthink, stop thinking, doom, what if? WHAT IF?

The alarm clock would go off and snap me into my routine pushing me to crack on and get another day done. Starting my mornings like this became a familiar pattern. Fretting about the little things became the new norm. I am lucky I suppose as I have a family and job and quite often the pure logistics of getting two teenagers out of bed and into action overrode any emotion. Keeping busy seemed to work – for most of the time anyway. I work from home so after the school-run I would tuck myself away and work until I was forced to jump into action and engage mum mode. Busy being a mum, busy being a wife, busy working at my desk, keeping busy meant I didn’t think.

I am currently coming out of a particularly bad bout of self-doubt where thinking for me had become unproductive frets – I had completely lost the inability to day-dream and just ‘be’. A thought would escalate at such an alarming rate that I quite often had to stop myself from calling an ambulance for my inevitable heart attack I was about to have; or calling around all of the local hospitals if my husband didn’t answer his phone and was late home from work.

The thought-fret process would quite often kick off from the smallest things. I would be happily ploughing away in the middle of a work project, when something would break my concentration – perhaps a text would ping on my phone. An innocent text from my very good friend, Susie, for example, could easily start the chest tightening fear.

“Hey Tils. Typical me, I double booked our cuppa for Fri am. Just checked & I’ve got dentist appt at 10am. Can we re-jig? I can do the afternoon instead or perhaps next week? Love S x (Love heart emoji or similar)”.

Once the stability of work and productive thought was interrupted, it would go either way. I would either read the text, reply or chose to reply later and carry on working (although this happened rarely!). Or more often than not, I would read the text and re-read the text, then start the thought-fret process of reading into the hidden meaning of the text. Already my brain would fill in the gaps with a process I now know is called ‘unhelpful thinking’.

Thought-fret process well under way – the paranoia would start – HAD Susie double booked – did she really have the dentist? How come she only just checked diary. I am sure she had a dentist appointment just a few weeks ago. YES LOOK!!! (by now I would be frantically scrolling through her older messages) SHE DID!!! Why did she lie. Did she lie? Did she lie back then or was she putting off our date back then as well. Who goes to the dentist twice in as many months? Do you think she is really putting me off because of what we discussed last time we had lunch? What did we talk about last time? I know – the exams – I think I chatted too much about my son. I knew I should have shut up at the time, I must have bored her to death going on and on and on about his school. Did I let her get a word in? Not surprised she must think I was showing off. Look!! (now I would be looking at her Instagram posts). Pictures of her with Catherine, and also her night out with Sal. Lots of comments and hearts. Nothing when we went out. She must think I am so, so boring…… I am not going to answer her text. No. Yes. No. OK.

Every text, call, email, or Instagram post got picked apart in this way. It often still does. Self-doubt creeps in even though I am learning to live with my anxiety. I will have coffee with friends and often end up texting later apologising for ‘going on’ about something. Or analysing conversations… did I dominate the whole time? If I don’t get an immediate thank you from a friend, or a ‘lovely seeing you’ today text – instead of taking it that they may be busy, I take it personally that I cocked up somehow. Constantly afraid I put my foot into something, upset someone, spoke out of turn, interrupted, was too loud, was too quiet. The frazzled state of an anxious mind. Fear of being judged. Judged for what I did or didn’t do. Judged for being me.? Sometimes it would take me an hour to write a text or reply to a group WhatsApp, reading and re reading before hitting the ‘send/post’ button on my phone. Hence the panic most mornings, furiously scrolling through the posts seeing what I had ‘liked’ and what I had commented on the night before – checking and re-checking if I had offended someone, waiting for the big judgy finger to point right into my soul.

Filling in the gaps with unhelpful thoughts to justify a story is one of the most annoying traits of anxiety. Not being able to accept straight away that Susie genuinely had two dentist appointments in as many months (turned out one was a check-up, the other the hygienist). It was exhausting, I was self-doubting everything. I often ducked out from social engagements at the last-minute feigning a headache/ too much work on/ childcare issues. I would rather miss out than feel threatened by my own insecurity. But dealing with the guilt afterwards for letting people down was the double whammy – fuelling the anxiety as I presumed people would judge me more for backing out.

Living in this cycle was making me really ill. I had to tackle it. I couldn’t relax at home, I couldn’t trust my judgement, I couldn’t rest. Every thought I had I would pick apart, analyse it, question it. And if I couldn’t solve it, I would be thrown into a dark spiral of panic. I remember one day standing in front of the oven chips section at Tesco. Too much choice. Curly, French fries, “home-style”, fat chips, low fat chips…. Just too many chips. I couldn’t choose, I felt that familiar tightness, my head went blank, my eyes glazed over and I panicked. And I walked out, leaving my trolley half-filled in the aisle. I sat in the car rocking like a baby – WTF was happening to me that I couldn’t even decide what to shop for. I cried and cried and crept back home and I think we had a take-away that night.

My journey has just begun. I am seeing a therapist who specialises in ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) as well as CBT. I have carried out bizarre personal challenges to prove or rather disprove theories. I am pushing myself above and beyond my comfort zone. And I am OK. And I also know there are days I am not OK. But, as the saying goes, it is OK not to be OK.