I woke up today with a sense of anxiety and sadness. I don’t know why, I rarely do, but it’s just very present.
Things have been a bit overwhelming in my life lately, and I’ve resorted to basically extreme avoidance as a way of dealing with it. But when I get more avoidant, I usually get more anxious.
Things build and pile on top of each other and just always feels worse. As much as I am avoidant in general, being this pregnant and exhausted has also made it much easier to be avoidant. Like, it’s so hard to do things physically, like laundry, so that’s another thing that I just don’t want to do.
Especially when there’s pressure on me to stay on top of it, because the last thing I want to do is come home to a ton of unfinished laundry when I have a baby.
My kids have both been fighting a small cold this week, and this morning I woke up feeling like I’m fighting it too. Which, again, the last thing I want to do is bring a baby home to a sick household. Even if it’s a mild cold for the rest of us, it might not be for him.
So, yeah. Anxiety. Just everything piling up, feeling like I have no control, and just life in general being hard.
I have therapy tonight, which I can’t believe I actually made it to, and I’m a little worried about it. Not because I think it will go badly, but because I think it might make me feel things. And feeling things just is not my favorite.
I still have not watched the video of my birth son that was on the news last week. It will likely (immediately) come up in therapy tonight, and I know that I should probably watch it.
It’s just that…it’s going to be super triggering for me and really hard. And, again…avoidance. I don’t want to do hard things, or things that hurt. I don’t want to feel sad and broken. And I don’t want to feel alone when I’m feeling those things either. So it’s just hard.
I’m glad I have therapy tonight, but I wish I didn’t need it. Like, I just wish things were easier, that I felt better…I just wish I had less on my plate.
I’m feeling run down and exhausted and overwhelmed, and I know that there just isn’t much I can do about that. Short of my husband staying home and taking the kids to their therapies so I can rest and sleep today…oh, that sounds so nice, doesn’t it?
A day to sleep and catch up on rest and give my body and mind the break it deserves…ugh.
Hopefully things go better today. Hopefully I have the emotional strength to make it through therapy…and whatever comes up as a result of it.
But just like with this baby, only time will tell. And I really have no control over any of it.
So I guess I’ll just have to go with it.
You are so right about avoidance not helping. It’s always a strategy I am pulled toward as well. I have to keep learning, over and over again, that when I am anxious about something, the best things I can do for myself is to turn TOWARD the thing I’m fearful of, instead of turning away. When I manage to do that, I end up feeling better, even if there is a difficult part before I get to the feeling better. It’s not easy, I know!
Exactly. Turning towards it is often exactly the solution that’s needed, and it does feel better. It’s just the actually doing it part that I struggle with. I know it logically, I just have to actually get there.
Believe me, I know that struggle well! Every time we manage it, we should cheer for ourselves and our bravery. Every time we don’t, we should have compassion for the very human difficulty of it all. xxoo