Aside about sleep:
Sleep was something that I struggled with for years prior to going into my current battle with anxiety, and now when it should seemingly be harder than ever, I have been able to relax myself enough to fall asleep without a single sleeping aid, I have been able to stay asleep for extended periods of time, fall back asleep when I do wake up in middle of the night, and go back to sleep even in the morning light! I used to toss and turn unable to sleep, I used to need background noise to fall asleep or a radio on, and now I am able to relax, breathe, calm my mind, gather my thoughts, think to myself, and fall asleep, back asleep, stay asleep, and have normal and pleasant dreams. And all this is with the worst anxiety and emotional and mental distress I have ever had in my life. Now that shows what I am capable of and I should be very proud of that! My entire life until this entire episode was a blur of background noise and distractions, followed by the inability to deal with silence and listen to my own thoughts, all in an attempt to keep me from stopping for a second and thinking. The anxiety and my journey through it has taught me to stop, calm down, relax, listen to my thoughts, talk to them, tell them what is really happening around me, and disprove any of its preconceived notions about life and reality. Now I listen and talk to my thoughts all day, never once attempting to silence, avoid, suppress, or drown them out. I am in touch with my thoughts, my consciousness and my awareness – that’s me – the me I’ve been searching for and trying to identify. I have also learned to de-stress each day when my wife is exercising or with a client, by turning off the TV and lights, taking some deep breaths, gathering my thoughts, listening to them, addressing them, talking to them, and challenging them when necessary. I go through my day and realize what I accomplished that day and how much I contributed to myself, my family, and the world. I implant into my subconscious true and positive beliefs and facts about myself and the world, which in turn helps change my reactions to things. And I am most proud of myself because I made the decision to do all of this without the help of a medication or therapist. Not that I’m better than anyone else, but knowing myself, medication would not help me and would only make me more anxious as I think about the side effects and after effects, but mostly because there isn’t a pill in the world that will make my anxiety go away. I am anxious for a reason, and all that the medication may do – and experience has shown that it won’t – is remove the symptoms of anxiety and perhaps make me drowsy, that’s all. I don’t want only the symptoms to go away, nor do I want to not be in control of myself. I do not want any side effects, nor do I want to become tolerant and need more and more medications and higher doses, and then become an addict as the medications begin to become less effective, as daily news stories continue to show, the rate of prescription and overdoses of prescription painkillers and muscle relaxants is increasing at staggering rates. Anxiety and worry never killed anyone. It was the medications or alcohol that the individual took that killed them. And that’s not the path I want or am going to take. I have two choices: either take medication to deal with only the symptoms of anxiety, and then have the side effects of the medication, the escalation of medication dependency, the health effects and possible death resulting from the medications, plus the strong possibility of losing my wife, my children, my job, etc. as I would begin to be under the influence of medications and progress down that path. And it’s not like I can take a medication that would just help for the long term, because it’s my mind and thoughts that I’m dealing with and nothing will turn off my mind. Nothing. But what I can do is control my thoughts. Gather my thoughts. Listen to my thoughts. Be in touch with my thoughts. Challenge my thoughts when they are not accurate. Input new, accurate, positive thoughts into my subconscious in order to replace the wrong, inaccurate or avoided thoughts that filled it before all of this. And the side effect of that? Actually tackling the underlying anxiety, beliefs, and thought processes. Now perhaps I may never fully tackle it, you may say, but remember that with medications, alcohol, drugs, etc. I’m still not even tackling them and I’m not even trying to! And then there are the side effects that have landed many people in hospitals, jails, or coffins. When tackling the thoughts themselves, there are no negative side effects whatsoever, and there is are many possible and likely positive side effects, like actually dealing with the core issue. So do I choose to drown out the thoughts, deal with the devastating aftereffects and still never get to the bottom of the issue, or do I tackle the underlying issue, have no negative side effects, have many immediate and future positive side effects, and perhaps even deal with the issue and move on as a better person who knows and understands myself better than ever and is more realistic, mature and mentally stable to raise my family? Hmm, it’s a no-brainer, forgive the pun. So that’s why I pat myself on the back. Because I made the difficult but mature decision that as long as I could function and get through the day, take care of my responsibilities to my family, my job, myself, my community, etc., that I would tackle the rest mentally and emotionally and without any cop-outs, I can give myself a lot of credit. Who’s me? Who am I? I asked myself not too long ago. I am the one who made the conscious decision to get in touch with myself, and I am the myself with whom I am getting in touch. I am the one who gets through the day each day and tackles the thoughts that are mine as well. I am the one who makes the conscious effort daily to care for my wife and children, control my thoughts and actions, try to see the reality of things, and give my children the tools and values to help them grow into emotionally stable people. In fact, just yesterday, AOL/Huffpost published a story about ex-SNL star Darryl Hammond who just came out with a new book in which he reveals that he had a very dark side. Due to a horrible childhood, he was having emotional distress and disturbing thoughts. He turned to cutting, painkillers, and eventually to hard illegal drugs, living in crack houses, and then had all of the effects that come with that: hospitalization, family issues, work issues, legal issues, etc. Lucky for him he never got into real trouble with the law and is still alive to tell his story, but many are not as fortunate. So he finally went to rehab, had a relapse, went to rehab again, now has countless physical and health effects – oh, and the kicker – with all the wasted years, money, and the lifelong effects that he is now left with – he did nothing to even attempt to address his thoughts, anxieties, etc. So now, after all of the hell and the rehab, and the recovery addiction which is essentially lifelong, he also still has to deal with the core issue that started this craziness in the first place! So here I am, dealing with a less intense circumstance but horrifying and distressful nonetheless, but I get to have the objectivity to see myself through it, hold onto my life, my family, my job and my health. And just like he ended up back at square one, so am I, only without the lifelong effects that he will now have to struggle with. Bravo! I honestly did not ever know how strong I was, but now I am starting to get a glimpse of it. Of me. Of I.
Then I remember that my brain has been playing games with me for reasons that I will go into in a moment. Then I begin to purposely hyper-focus, purposely mix up information and images in my head in order to freak myself out and say, “You see? You are crazy!” But of course, I do nothing out of the ordinary in actuality because I am not losing it. So to the outside world everything is normal and ordinary. But in my head, it’s crazy at times.
So let’s analyze what is happening and what is not happening, and then I will analyze the causes of what’s happening. It will show that what’s happening is essentially nothing, the consequences are nothing, and the causes are nothing. It’s nothing with nothing.
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