Anxiety Stories

Today I had a long day of meetings and conference calls. I had specific points during the calls on which it was my turn to present and, even though I took a Klonopin, even though I've been blogging and telling my personal stories about anxiety, even though I could feel my anxiety creeping in and I told it, "I've dealt with this on a call before and it sucked and I can deal with it again" just like my therapist said I still had another minor panic attack. It's discouraging and frustrating. And on top of doing everything right, taking the Klonopin makes me so tired that I end up taking long naps and that messes with my sleep cycles. I just don't want this shit anymore.

My daughter is mad at me. I'm sitting outside on our outdoor couch in the cool evening and I have my blanket positioned just right. I don't want to share. She has homework to do and is struggling to get it done so she came to join me on the couch to work on it and asked for part of my blanket. I'm pretty sure if I don't share a blanket with my 11-yr old I'm a bad role model on sharing. Yet I didn't want to. I am perfectly positioned and poised to relax and sit for a while, writing and reading with my little doggie at my feet. So I said, "No, why don't you go get another blanket?"

She walked off in a huff and I'm feeling a little guilty wondering, Was that the right time to say no? There is a fine line between teaching her loving kindness to others (here I would be the role model and give her my blanket) and teaching her to put herself first (here I would be the role model and tell her I wasn't going to share this blanket and please go get her own). Parenting is 90% winging it.

Her teacher called me today concerned about her schoolwork because she hasn't turned in any work in over two weeks. I'm not sure what is going on with my daughter but her teacher suggested she could be dealing with some depression since she is so social and can't see her friends during the quarantine. Perfect timing, a good friend with a daughter asked if we would like to go for a walk tomorrow evening. We could both use a friend and a good talk. In this case I'm making the call that mental health takes precedent over staying at home. For her and for me.