Life can get stressful and anxiety can rear its ugly head often. Anxiety can be crippling and hit you in the worst times, I hear ya! My anxiety hits in the middle of the night when I am trying to fall asleep. But, there are also severe cases of anxiety that cause people physical and emotional issues for days and some require medication. Today, I am focusing on the most common anxiety that affects basically everyone.
The past year has been one of the worst of my life. I not only lost my mom in Oct 2016, but personal changes in Jan 2017 had me starting completely over at the age of 49. It was also a time of political unrest in the country and crazy natural disasters to add to this stress. As I tried to deal with everything on a daily basis, anxiety was always there, more so than normal. And yes, it usually hit me late at night when I was trying to go to sleep. I thought long and hard about sharing this story in such a public setting, but what I have learned over the past year is that I am not alone – I have come across so many women from ages in their 20s to 50s dealing with these same issues.
In trying to reign in my anxiety, I made mental notes of the situations that I could not do anything about. I also thought about what was the worst that could happen (in some cases this added to the anxiety). But, then I decided to just give myself some grace and a year to “recover” and find “myself” again. But this was not an overnight change to find my laughter again and, in the words of Jennifer Lopez, to learn “to dance again”. Am I there yet? Not sure, but what I have learned over the past year was to focus on baby steps. Yes, baby steps – taking one day at a time, then plan for the next week and then a few weeks more. I still try not to think about next year, but I am positive that one day, next year, it will no longer be difficult to think about the distant future.
