The occasional Saturday photo: Squirrel on a fence

“If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.” George Eliot

 What is the importance of the ordinary in life?

A way through anxiety: Accepting ourselves

Imagine you’re holding an ice cube in your hand.

You concentrate on the sensations doing that causes.

Eventually, you begin to have thoughts unrelated to the sensations, thoughts like, “This is really uncomfortable,” or “How much longer do I have to do this?”

When those thoughts come, you notice them, acknowledge that you have them, and then go back to concentrating on the sensations of holding an ice cube.

Acceptance

That is an illustration that my therapist used to explain acceptance in terms of generalized anxiety disorder or any anxiety.

On my last visit, I told him about the increased anxiety I’ve had lately. I’ve felt revved up and unable to settle down and concentrate.

So he talked to me about accepting my anxiety. He said it’s not the same thing as liking the anxiety.

And it’s different from actually making the anxiety worse by worrying about the bodily sensations of anxiety, worrying about worrying, “catastrophizing” the fact that we feel anxious.

We can practice acceptance by focusing on the bodily sensations that come from feeling anxious. When an unrelated thought comes along, we can acknowledge it but then return our attention to the sensations.

With this mindfulness, we can begin to accept that our body is expressing anxiety.

Acceptance is to acknowledge what we’re experiencing and then to go on to something else.

Ironically, that makes the anxiety easier to deal with, my therapist said.

Mindfulness

The ice cube example also helps to illustrate the importance of mindfulness. We can choose to focus on our anxious feelings, but I’ve learned that we can also choose to focus on something like the breath, or our senses.

Every time we realize we’re thinking of something other than the breath or what we’re hearing, for example, we can bring our attention back. Usually I have to do this again and again

That puts me in the moment. It takes me away from my worries. It takes me away from worrying about my worries.

And even a little while away from the worries provides me with relief. And a little more acceptance.

What about you? Does accepting the anxiety make sense to you?

They do go together: Depression and gratitude

What do I have to be thankful for when it comes to depression? Quite a bit, I discovered, when I sat down to make a list.

*I am thankful that I am being treated for depression. Before I was diagnosed with depression, before I was treated, I lived in a gray and brown world. That’s the way things seemed: no color, little light, dull and lifeless. Hopeless. Though I’ve had periods of depression even after I started treatment, even though I have bad times, I’ve never fully returned to that gray and brown world.

*I am thankful for the treatments that are available. I’m thankful for the medications and therapies that have been developed for use with depression. I’m thankful for the intelligent minds and compassionate hearts that have tried to find ways to combat this disease.

*I’m thankful for doctors and therapists that have helped me in the past and today. I’ve had some bad luck with providers, but overall, I’ve had some good ones, and a few excellent ones. Right now, I have a couple of excellent providers who help me weather the depression.

*I’m thankful that I can afford to pay for medication and therapy. I’m thankful I have health insurance to help me do that.

*I’m thankful for close friends who have listened to me through the years and offered support and encouragement without judgment. I’m thankful for the blogging community and the friends I’ve made through blogging. I have received so much inspiration and hope.

*I’m thankful for my cats. Their presence is always a comfort, and they teach me about love and life every day.

*I’m thankful for my husband. My world is beautiful for knowing him and having him in my life. He loves me, depression and all. I love him.

*I’m thankful for the hope in my heart. I hold on to that hope when the darkness comes around.

What is one thing you are thankful for today?

Starting a sewing adventure

   I can crochet. I can do cross-stitch. I can do a little embroidery.

But I can’t sew. And I want to.

A little background: when my mother still sewed, she was a wonderful seamstress. She could make anything—dresses, blouses, shirts, pants, quilts—and did it beautifully. As a child, I watched her sew and imagined that one day I would do it.

When I was 14, my mother let me take a sewing class through the local recreation department.



Here I am at 14 sewing in class.



I managed to make a drawstring skirt. But I remembered nothing afterwards about how I had accomplished it.

Flash forward 30 years. I decided I wanted to give sewing another try, so my husband bought me a great sewing machine for Christmas in 2007.

My sewing machine.

I managed to push through my procrastination and anxiety and learned to use the machine. I made some pillows and cut out blocks to make a little quilt. I didn’t do a great job, but I was learning.

Then things went south for my mental health—I went through an episode of depression and extreme anxiety, the worst anxiety and fear that I’d ever experienced. And the cover stayed on the sewing machine.

It’s been sitting downstairs in the basement in my work area ever since. But I periodically thought about it and kept telling myself that some day I would learn.

Last week, for reasons I still don’t understand, I felt the need and the energy to go downstairs and clear away the things I’d stacked around the sewing machine. I made room on my worktable. I dusted everything.

And Sunday night I sat down and loaded up a bobbin and rethreaded the machine.

It wasn’t easy. I didn’t remember how to do it, so I had to follow the instructions in the user manual, some of which I didn’t understand. Larry helped me and we finally got it done.

I took out fabric and looked over some patterns I have.

I decided to make an apron for Larry since he does more cooking than he used to do. It won’t be a feminine apron—I’m using material covered in a Virginia Tech motif. Virginia Tech is his alma mater.

Fabric with a Virginia Tech theme.

I’m going to try this. I know it won’t be perfect. I can’t guarantee that it will even be good. But something in me wants to try.

I’ve again pushed through the procrastination and the anxiety. I don’t know if it’s therapy, medication or both, but I’m feeling more like doing things.

And I want to make something for my husband.

Do you sew or do other crafts? What was the last thing you made, or what is your current project? Does anxiety or depression ever get in the way of enjoying your activities?

Worry and tension: Generalized anxiety disorder

I feel the effects of the adrenaline, a hyper feeling. My heart beats faster. Sometimes my arms feel numb. I can’t settle down to do anything. I walk around the house a lot, watch TV for a couple of minutes, go into the kitchen and eat something, fast, then open up a book and try to read, then walk around some more.

If I’m at work, I get up and walk around, too. When at my desk, I swing around in my chair. I write in spurts before I have to stop again.

My jaw stays tight. Every now and then, I realize I have my lips pursed, held firmly, tightly.

I may have nausea. I may have diarrhea. I may get a headache. My hands may shake.

I feel exhausted much of the time. But my sleep is interrupted—I wake up numerous times during the night and sometimes have trouble going back to sleep.

I feel like something bad is going to happen. I don’t know what, but it will be bad, if I go by how I feel.

Sometimes I lie in bed at night and say over and over to myself, I’m afraid. Sometimes I whisper it aloud if Larry hasn’t come to bed yet.

I’m afraid and I don’t know why.

That is my generalized anxiety disorder. Most of the time, I don’t have all of these symptoms, but I’m a worrier and I’m tense most of the time, finding it hard to relax.

According to “Generalized Anxiety Disorder: When Worry Gets Out of Control,” a publication on the website of the National Institute of Mental Health, generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD, is an anxiety disorder that causes sufferers to worry about things without a clear reason to:

“All of us worry about things like health, money, or family problems. But people with GAD are extremely worried about these and many other things, even when there is little or no reason to worry about them. They are very anxious about just getting through the day. They think things will always go badly. At times, worrying keeps people with GAD from doing everyday tasks.”

The publication goes on to list the symptoms of GAD:

*Worrying very much about everyday things

*Trouble controlling constant worries

*Knowing they worry much more than they should

*Not being able to relax

*Hard time concentrating

*Easily startled

*Trouble falling asleep or staying asleep

*Feeling tired all the time

*Headaches, muscle aches, stomachaches, unexplained pains

*Difficulty swallowing

*Trembling or twitching

*Irritability, sweating a lot, feeling light-headed or out of breath

*Having to go to the bathroom a lot

The booklet goes on to say that treatment for GAD is usually psychotherapy, especially cognitive behavior therapy, medication or both.

I take medication and I’m in therapy, both of which help my GAD. I’m finding that meditation, being mindful as often as possible and deep breathing also help. So does reading or doing some other enjoyable activity.

And I’m working on changing the way I think about things. For example, I try to catch myself when I’m in catastrophe mode and remind myself that I’m making the situation bigger than it is.

Still, I have those times of anxiety. Sometimes I don’t know what causes them. I go through all the things that could be worrying me—personal, work—but sometimes I can’t figure it out.

Do you ever have episodes of generalized anxiety? What are they like? How do you cope?

OCD and the “what ifs”

Last week I was driving from work to meet my husband for lunch in a restaurant in town. I drove down a street parallel to Main Street, the street the restaurant is on.

As I drove, I considered the different intersections I could turn at to get to Main Street.

One has rough patches in the right turning lane. When I make that turn and feel the car go over the rough road, I always have a moment of worry that I’ve hit someone. I drive for a moment afterwards with my eyes in the rearview mirror looking for bodies.

Another way to get to Main Street involves driving in a crowded area beside a convenience store, with people pulling in and out in cars and walking on foot. I worry about running into another car or person.

I thought, What if I take the first way and something happens? I’ll wish I had waited and taken the second way.

Then I thought, What if I take the second way, and something happens. I’ll wish I had taken the first way.

The “what ifs” were valid in that I didn’t know what would happen when I pulled up to either intersection. There was always the chance of an accident. How did I know which way to take to avoid one?

I didn’t. Whichever route I chose, I would have to live with that decision. And wonder if I had made the right one.

Making choices pulls out the old uncertainty quandary. We make choices all the time, some without thinking. With other choices, we ponder which is the best one.

We can’t ever really know which is the best choice. Everything might turn out just fine and safe with one choice. But who’s to say that the other choice wouldn’t have been even better?

So we have to live with our choices. We can do our best in the moment to make the right choices, but we’ll never really know if it was the right one or the best one. Not really.

By the way, I did arrive safely at the restaurant without hurting anyone. As far as I know.

For as Dr. Jonathan Grayson says in his book Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty, “while all of us feel certain about many things, the truth is that the absolute certainty we feel is an illusion. An event may be probable or improbable, but neither is an absolute. The inability to feel or be certain is reasonable” (p. 9).

How do we live with that?

Random facts and interesting questions

I want to thank Sanny at the blog “Unraveling the Mysteries of Life” for nominating me for the Liebster Blog award.

Sanny is a student of Media Management who is very creative in her writing and life. She always makes me think beyond the surface with her blog posts. I hope that if you haven’t already, you will check out her blog.

For this award, I need to post 11 things about me, answer the questions that Sanny gave me and nominate up to 11 people with blogs with less than 200 followers.

So here are 11 random things about me:

1. I play the piano and the organ. I haven’t played the organ in years, but I occasionally sit down at my keyboard and play.

2. My mother had nine siblings and my father had eight, plus my grandparents had large families, so I have a lot of relatives.

3. I used to write poetry a lot.

4. My first pet was a dog named Sissy.

5. I love to read mysteries and thrillers.

6. I am really funny about the kind of pens I write with.

7. I carry big purses because I carry with me everything I might need. My right shoulder has a dip it in from carrying heavy bags for most of my life.

8. I have multiple journals that I’ve written in and never finished. Lots of pretty books with lots of blank pages!

9. I’m allergic to tree nuts but not to peanuts. Good thing, because I love peanut butter.

10. My favorite colors are purple and blue. A purplish blue is the loveliest.

11. I have a lot of animal-themed jewelry, especially cat jewelry and paw-print jewelry.

These are the questions that Sanny gave:

1.  Do you believe in miracles? Yes, I believe there are many things that happen that cannot be explained by the usual means.

2.  What is the reason you started your blog? I started my blog to make connections with others suffering from or wanting to learn more about OCD and depression.

3.  What is your favorite animal and why? Cats! I love their grace, their attitude, their beauty. I love their affection, their intelligence, their loyalty.

4.  What do you appreciate the most about your life? My husband and his love and support.

5.  What’s the last book you read and what’s it about? The last book I read is I Hardly Ever Wash My Hands: The Other Side of OCD, by J.J. Keeler. I just wrote a review about it here. It’s about a woman’s struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

6.  If you would go to a lonely island, what three things would you take with you? If I couldn’t take my husband or cats, I would take books, paper and pens, and peanut butter (technically more than three things, but I’ll lump them into three categories).

7.  Do you thing that failure is always a bad thing or can it also encourage you to retry or try it differently? Failure is not always a bad thing. I have learned from failure until I’ve improved at something. And I think it makes us stronger and reminds us that life will not always go our way and isn’t supposed to.

8.  Have you ever had a life changing moment? And if so, what was it about? I’ve had many of these moments. One is when my father died. I realized that my life as I knew it was over forever. Life changes when someone who has been a part of it is gone.

9. What is your favorite TV show? “A Person of Interest.”

10. Besides writing, what do you mostly do on your computer? I read others’ blogs and news articles. I also download and process photos.

11. If you could change something in your life, what would you change? I would work for myself.

Now I’d like to nominate Krystal Lynn, of the blog “Sprinkle Some Sugar on Me: I am More than OCD” for this blog award. She writes down-to-earth, intelligent and heartfelt posts about her own journey with OCD.

What random fact about yourself are you willing to share?