Dancing Through Anxiety

As I explained last week I've been feeling on more of an uphill climb into the world of a "normal" human being. With this comes the confusion of feeling good then not good, feeling capable and then needing rest. Basically I have to continuously test and push my limits to see what I'm ready and not ready for. It's a lot of back and forth and honestly sometimes it can be pretty frustrating but it's a necessary step in my journey of progress. This weekend I had the chance to volunteer at the Strawberry Festival 🍓🍓which takes place in my hometown every Memorial Day Weekend. This was a pretty big test for myself and my limits. Not only did I commit to four days in a row of doing something, it was also going to be in a place full of triggers for me: crowds, outside weather, set time periods, responsibility. I knew that I could do it for at least one of the events but helping for all four days was going to be a stretch for me so I was a little nervous. The differen...

Wow has it been a while! I have to apologize for the lack of posting recently but I've been making some great steps forward and wasn't sure how to write about them. I've been feeling on the brink of a good progress for a while now but still felt nervous about it and didn't know how to live in the moment and let it happen.  It all started when I realized a common factor in my life was that I would panic during the car ride to somewhere and then would either have to fight through a panic attack or turn around and go home. I was missing out on things I wanted to do and couldn't figure out how to conquer this until I found a way to take back control. I realized (with the help of my therapist of course) that one of the reasons I would panic during car rides is because I had this fear that if I was in a really bad place whoever was driving the car wouldn't listen to me and wouldn't do what I needed to be done, whether that was to pull over, turn around, etc. Aft...

So I've been in this kind of weird place lately, where I feel like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff trying to jump across to safety, but in a good way. Crazy right? Let me explain. I've come to the point where it feels like I'm ready to take a big leap in my progress, and through working on conquering these panic attacks that have moved from my mind to my body, I should be moving into the direction of connecting my mind and body and handling my anxiety with more ease. I'm not quite there yet but I can feel it coming, so that's where I get that feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff. I'm preparing to jump, but I'm not quite ready yet, because I haven't finished building up my tools to believe that I can successfully make the jump without letting myself fall. I don't really know if this makes sense to any of you out there, but when my therapist and I had a conversation about this I felt that it perfectly described the unease but hope I am fe...