I’m an anxious, active, and driven person.  I care about getting things done, and I care about people.  I like to do everything well.  This caring about everything necessitated an enormous juggling act.  As a mother, suddenly if I was busy, over focused on anything, my child might choke or die.  This responsibility that never ends, disrupts sleep, and has potentially dire consequences for mistakes did nothing to calm me down.

I didn’t really realize how anxious I’ve been since then until others in my family complained about similar issues.  In order to help them cope, I wrote out all the best ways I know of to deal with stress.  It turned out I knew almost 200 healthy ways to deal with my own anxiety.  Clearly this is more of an issue for me than I realized.

Most of my symptoms resemble ADHD.  I’m distractible.  I’m active.  I have a hard time finishing things.  I am challenged by routine, etc.  My mom jokes, “as a young mother, you can never expect to say a full sentence without getting interrupted.”  I found that literally to be true, especially if I was on the telephone.

So, was this because I was a mother of many small children, or was the difficulty coming from inside myself, somewhere internally?  I didn’t know.  And, in large part I still don’t.  I do know what it is like to live with mental illness and it gets very, very tricky to know who is sick, him or me?  Living with mental illness can make you feel crazy yourself.  Maybe motherhood had the same effect?

Since I was now aware of my chronic, general anxiety, I decided to see if I could discover a way to conquer it once and for all.  Maybe my fears were causing my ADHD like behaviors.

In the Anxiety Cure by DuPont, Spencer, and DuPont, I found the answer I wasn’t looking for:

A cure is regaining control of your life, not being free of panic and worry.

The universal antidote for all anxiety disorders is acceptance….acceptance of the feelings and thoughts produced in the anxious, sensitized brain…not accepting the limitations in your life that anxiety is trying to force on you.

Fear cannot be controlled by force.  I can’t just make myself stop worrying.  Our body’s stress and fear reactions are actually fueled by cycles of overthinking and fear.  Truly, in conquering fear, Franklin D. Roosevelt had it right on target:  “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

So, I can’t beat it.  We all have an innate, animal-like part of the brain that will always respond to danger, real or imagined.  It is meant to protect us and help us to survive.  So, I can expect to over-react from time to time.  Military, medical personnel, and pilots do not conquer their fear.  They learn how to act during it.  They practice shooting while tired, using a list, and going through motions in very loud and alarming environments.  Instead of avoiding it, they learn to master their tasks in spite of it.

Not all fear is bad.  It helps us to prepare for real, potentially dangerous events.  It is what helped me prepare my 72 hour kits for my family, and what helps me remember to update them every year.  Fear caused me to learn CPR well enough to teach it so I would feel confident in an emergency.  Fear actually sharpens our awareness and keeps us alert.  It energizes my preparation for a test and keeps me awake and watchful when caring for toddlers.  Maybe my alarm system is overactive, but it is not useless.

Jeff Wise, in Extreme Fear, counsels us like a concerned father:

Lowering your stress level can be as simple as wearing a warm coat on a cold day.  Physical stressors like noise, hunger, heat and cold can take a major toll in high-intensity situations.  So to steel yourself for danger, take the advice of an old song:  Button up your overcoat and get to bed by three.

Clearly, good self-care and managing our time and environment well will have an impact on anxiety. I can’t say enough good things about getting enough rest and exercise.  But, the bottom line, what it all comes down to is:

To read all of DarEll’s articles, click on the picture.

This is how it is.  I am human.  I do have to change. –  I have to change my expectations, and learn to master my tasks in spite of how I feel.  It is a different kind of lion hunt:

“Can’t go over it,

Can’t go under it,

Gotta go through it.”

May you move forward with a grace that belies how you feel, like our courageous elderly live with smiles in spite of pain.

Namaste,

DarEll S. Hoskisson