Ongoing: living anxiety workbook

[bigeekgirl]

I hope you get the tenderest and juiciest pieces of orange chicken. ((Hugs))

1. By my account, you are succeeding because you are changing what is in your control to change. Granted, not as easily or quickly as you'd like.

2. Everything left are factors you can only set yourself up for success in. And you are taking steps in #1 to do that.

[oak]

[edit to add: the Bourne book I reference below is the Anxiety and Phobia Workbook (7th Ed) by Edward Bourne. Thank heaven for this brother and his book.]

Friends, I am only as sick as my secrets, so here goes:

I’ve been wracked by anxiety, for good reason (finances and sleep apnea), for two weeks. Hence, I bump my longest thread, here.

I have good reason to believe grinding my teeth has re-killed (?) the tooth I had a root canal. Anxiety causing anxiety!

That is the bad news. I do not equivocate.

Happily, there is lots of good news:

1. I am taking direct action regarding my biggest stressors: financially, with sleep apnea, and to build my professional skills.

2. I am meeting with my dentist and nutritionist tomorrow, and my dear doctor next week. Update soon!

3. I am reading my deeply beloved anxiety book by Bourne. To the extent that I have any reason to smile, I have to smile that I am doing many of the things advised (nutrition and exercise) by Bourne much better than when I started this thread in 2018.

Also, thank heaven for my public library providing the Libby app, which I could get the Bourne book.

4. Though limited, I have modest plans, thank heaven, for a little fun in the coming weeks: watching some Hallmark movies on Hoopla (thanks again to the public library!), and in 3.5 weeks to go to a swing dance.

I used to take such things for granted.

Update soon!

I hope you get the tenderest and juiciest pieces of orange chicken. ((Hugs))

1. I miss Biggeekgirl. She was such a sweetheart, and hope she is doing well.

2. While there’s nothing wrong with orange chicken, now and then, my post from 2018 seems like someone else: while I’d be happy to eat it nowadays, I just can’t see it: the Mediterranean diet seems so much more natural to me (it doesn’t nauseate me like the Standard American Diet did), and I can’t imagine spending money on takeout.

[oak]

Friends!

At the risk of stating the obvious, I have an anxiety disorder.

I’ve been professionally diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and PTSD.

Though undiagnosed*, I clearly have OCD and social phobia (anxiety around dating eg inviting women on dates**).

I say all this not to belabor my situation, but to get it all out. To Dutch Uncle myself.

Said another way: it is refreshing to read the Bourne book. I know I’m or the only one experiencing this, and that there is an action-based way/method forward.

Anxiety had made me feel so alone; not be alone, as evidenced by my good friends in this very forum, but to feel alone. Alienated.

I want to do better, my friends.


* I may well bring this up with my dear doctor next week.

** This may be a reasonable anxiety: while no good man wants to be (or even appear) creepy, my dating life is a shambles.