Look Ma! No Hands!

Its been a while, I know. And from my heart, I send you my deepest condolences. I should tell you, however, that a lot of things have changed since the last time I posted here. 

1. A while back, I mentioned I volunteered at a senior's home. One of the men there (I think I told you about the man who had cancer), past away around the end of August. I miss him a lot.
2. I stopped volunteering at the senior's home. Being there, with all the memories of the people that I grew to love was starting to get a little more difficult than I could handle. After two years there, I finished up. As a bonus, they sent me a little gift card to my local movie theater, which was kind of them.
3. I'm in the process of getting a new volunteering job in my area. People, I've learned, are insanely difficult to work with. Don't give up, though, because you'll find a good enough person sooner or later.

And, probably the biggest change of all...

    4.   I GOT A THERAPIST! (cue cheers)

That's right, friends. I got myself a wonderful therapist who helped me through so many of the terrible thoughts that started coming back to me and it was all amazing and life started looking up again!
Then, IT happened.
One night, I missed an appointment. It was all just one big miscommunication and an accident, totally unintentional. So, she was called. And called. And called. But she never called back, never rescheduled an appointment and I haven't seen her now since October. It kind of stinks that the one woman that was kind of like my life preserver left me to drown. Little did she know, however, that she threw me enough rope to pull myself back to shore. I still have to fall asleep at night with the television on to cope with hard thoughts, but I've learned how to deal with my anxiety during the day. She was also the one that convinced me it was a good idea to leave the senior's home, and I think that was a wise decision.

In this post, I've talked so much about myself, I haven't given you much advice. Here's the thing: Keep on keeping on. I've heard that before, I can't remember where, but it's pretty awesome, isn't it? My therapist left me for a reason, but I had her long enough that I can deal. I can handle myself pretty well on a day to day basis, and some of that is because of her. But the rest is from the strength of myself, my friends and my family. We kept on keeping on, and didn't stop living because of nothing. Life isn't amazing right now, but it is so much better, you wouldn't believe.

I have some awesome tips for tomorrow, so don't you worry your little soul about that. Elizabeth's back, friends!

Kisses and Hugs (I've never liked xoxo),
Elizabeth 

How to Deal

 So, hopefully a lot of you read my first post and wanted to read more. From the looks of it, nobody did, but hey, you have to start somewhere, right? I'm not giving up on my mission just because nobody has read my blog. YET. Still, I've decided to create another blog, one that's a little more for everybody, not just people with anxiety and other mental illnesses, about all sorts of crap, like movie and book reviews and my personal little rants (I have a lot of them). Here's the link: Viewing is Reviewing.

 Now, to the main topic of this post. So, the most important thing when you're suffering from anxiety is to learn how to deal with you're problems. Let's take the basis of my anxiety and use it as an example. I am deathly afraid of death (pun was ENTIRELY intended). I worry all the time about the safety of my family, particularly my mom, and my own demise. I'm really sorry if I'm making you afraid of all these things, and if you have a problem with it, please let me know, otherwise I'll probably keep doing it. Anyways, from time to time, I let my mind wander and all the awful, scary thoughts spiral out of control and before I know it, I'm having a panic attack. First things first: Keep panicking. I know it sounds a little strange, maybe even psychotic, but I'm being honest here. Fears are endorphins, we need them to stay alive, or we'd just jump in front a moving car without a care in the world. What you need to do it try and stay in that mode of panic, if you can, because like all endorphins, eventually, they'll fade away and the panic will leave. I know that sometimes, that can be really hard and maybe even impossibly. I can hardly do it myself. And if that's the case with you, there are other things you can do.

When I was little, and I started to have my panic attacks and couldn't sleep, I'd always ask my mom if she could give me something to think about when I closed my eyes. I'd end up dreaming about ponies and unicorns and Mickey Mouse, or something along those lines. Keep in mind I was eight, so that might now work for you, but if you can distract yourself with another thought of some sort, do it. It might just work.

As I got older, Mickey Mouse and unicorns just wasn't cutting it anymore. So I started to read and watch television and all sorts of other things. When I went to group therapy, however, they told us not to do that. They said it would distract us and we needed to face these things head on. Now, I don't know if the therapists there ever faced anxiety attacks, but I can tell you for sure that that method DID NOT work for me. My distracting thought was the television, or my book, or the radio. I needed that to stop my fears, and if you need it to, go for it. Because fears can be scary, anxiety can be terrifying, and when you feel like curling up and dying, the last thing you're going to want to do is keep suffering. 

That's it for today, folks. Tomorrow, I'll probably have something up about different types of anxiety and sites that you can go to when this won't cut it (like that will ever happen).

Until tomorrow (unless you need me NOW, then you can e-mail me at ifyouknowyourecrazy@hotmail.ca for anything urgent),

Elizabeth~