What Me, Worry? Yes, All The Time

I have been in therapy for approximately ten years. I am a few months away for the ten year anniversary of the major nervous breakdown I had in college. For those who weren’t there, I had woken up, gone for a walk, and got back to my room to basically freeze up and eventually be brought to them hospital. It was one of the scariest days of my life and was the culmination of years of stress and worry.

I don’t know what brought it on but it did lead to three years of medication that didn’t make it better. In many instances, it made it all worse. One year later, I was seeing the school counselor at Ripon. Then I left there, went to a psychiatrist, and have been seeing the same therapist since December 2004. I started going to Mary when Identity Crisis was being published by DC Comics. So, that series has an important place in my life even though it is a controversial story. It was the major event comic-wise that occurred when I began to turn my life around.

For years, I worked on social anxiety. Recently, we have begun to focus on stresses at work since my job changed and I still haven’t adapted well. But i think the next thing I have to work on is my worrying. I don’t understand why I worry about everything, but it leads to many problems.

I think the worst is always going to happen. When I was a kid, I used to wake up in the middle of the night crying because I thought my parents were dead. The same thought process would make me run around while walking to school to make sure my mom was alive. She always was, but I still have the thoughts about people I know. I think about them getting into car crashes, their houses burning down, and other awful things. I lie awake at night, sometimes, thinking about all the things I am doing wrong and all the mistakes I have made.

Of course worrying is not always the worst thing. Some worry is normal and probably good. It keeps me organized. It makes me think ahead so bad things may not happen. But at times, it consumes all of my thoughts and paralyzed me. That’s never a good thing and it is never helpful.

I have been in a blue mood for about two weeks. I have no reason to be. But I do have a lot of good things being juggled together. I am maintaining them all and I believe doing a good job, but I fear and worry that the balls will drop. I have become unmotivated and just a bit somber. I am trying to piece things together that do make me feel better.

For example, I have set up a new point system based off of The Nerdist plan that I discussed earlier. I have given myself daily activities to do. Next, I am going to work on weekly tasks. And then monthly tasks. But daily seems like a good place to start.

The five tasks are meditation, writing, running, reading, and strength training. Part of meditation includes going back to church on Sundays (which may become its own weekly goal) and starting my day with at least ten minutes of good meditation to start my day. My goal is to write for at least 30 minutes a day, including posts to this blog. My goal is also thirty minutes of reading, including comics. And running and working out makes me feel better about life, but it is also the first thing I drop when I feel down. So, if I can maintain running, I hope to stay positive. Cue the Hold Steady song.

I wish there was a point to writing this. It isn’t a woe is me blog or anything specific. I have a lot of good things going. And that’s the hard part. I need to focus on them and to focus on me doing the things I love. It seems easy.