One day at a time?

No, not the TV show.  Am I dating myself?  At any rate, I'm sure everyone has heard of this phrase before.  I'm also sure that most of you have heard it in reference to alcoholics and/or drug addicts.  But, sometimes one day at a time doesn't quite work.  This is especially true if you are at a low point in your life or are having a hard time at the moment. 

The saying is meant to help people with addiction (us included) to focus on the now and not the past or future.  Remember, if you are living in the past you're depressed, if you are living in the future you're anxious, if you are living in the present you are content.  All forms of addiction have anxiety and depression feelings linked to it, so it's best to focus on the present moments and take things one day at a time.  However, sometimes a whole 24 hours is too much pressure for us to handle all at once.  So, I encourage you to take things one hour at a time instead!  If you are having an issue, a pain, a moron client, whatever...take it for that hour, deal with it, then let it go.  If you are having a good time, are happy, are relaxed...build on that, absorb the positive feelings and enjoy the moment that is making you smile.  Eventually, like writing down your negative thoughts, the bad moments won't seem as bad and won't stick in our minds for long while the good moments will carry us through the day. 

Today I had some ups and downs, as I'm sure everyone did.  I went most of the day w/o stomach pain but it started to come back around noon.  So I told myself that yes, I know the pain is there, but it's not severe, and therefore I am not going to feed into the mind games my brain tends to play when I have a pain.  In other words, I gave it no power and chose to continue on with my day.  The next hour was lunch so that was good (fatty likes to eat).  The rest of the day just crawled along and was even keel.  My last 15 minutes of work turned into a 45 minute wait for a client who said she'd be at my office to drop something off within that 15 minutes.  The more I waited, the more upset it made me.  However, her rudeness is none of my control.  Although it made me mad, I chose to focus on the wonderful pedi present my mom scheduled for me for 5pm and I left those feelings at work.  FF to my spa pedicure when I happily picked out a pretty purple color that made me happy just to look at it and I eagerly hopped in the chair with a book I've been trying to finish for over a year.  Although I do have issues with them sanding my feet, I kept telling myself to just relax with it an enjoy it.  And, I did!  One hour of being pampered was amazing and now my Freddy Krueger toes are cut back and pretty again.  Even hours later I'm still feeling the affects of this amazing time my mom gave to me and I'm relaxed and ready to face tomorrow.  So, even though my day had bad parts, I took it one hour at a time, one issue at a time and it still turned out to be a really good day regardless of the speed bumps that I had to slow down and climb myself over.

There's a saying out there somewhere about not letting a bad moment turn into a bad day or a bad day turning into a bad life.  I'll have to find it, but you get the gist.  One bad moment shouldn't delegate how the rest of your day should go.  If you let it, you will be missing out on so many amazing moments.  Instead of living one bad moment to another, try to live one great moment to another.  So think back about your day today and list the amazing moments you had, even if they seem small.  Allow yourself to be happy.

Much Love and Light~

Tammy

Past, Present, and Future

The past, present, and future can mean a lot of things to a lot of people.  More often than not, you'll see it honored in some way such as the three stone necklaces and rings.  I, myself, have three ladybugs tattooed on my foot to remind me of where I came from, where I am now, and my dreams for the future.  However, this blog post is not about honoring or remembering, this blog post is about how you are living you're life.


The Past
If you are constantly thinking of,  re-playing things in your head, or just generally living life in the past, you are showing depression.  No, I don't mean that looking back on fond memories means you're depressed.  Remember, I am speaking from the perspective of someone with an anxiety disorder.  I am talking about how one little issue can be replayed over and over in our heads along with the million of other scenarios we "should have" done instead.

Raise your hand if you've gotten ready for bed and stayed up for hours re-playing the day and beating yourself up for things you didn't say, should have done, could have done better.   *raises hand*  Instead of moving on we tend to dwell on "issues" that no one even noticed or if they did, they don't care about.  Yet, we will torture ourselves for hours, days, or even weeks and months over something so trivial that no one else even remembers.  This constant scolding we do to ourselves makes us feel bad, worthless, and like we can't do anything right.  Hell, there are times now that an incident will randomly pop up in my head from years ago and I think STILL beat myself up for not doing x, y, and z.  For example, several years ago I was on my way to work and stopped at a red light.  There was a little old lady walking on the sidewalk and she lost her balance.  She didn't fall, but she stumbled a bit.  To this day I beat myself up for not getting out of my car and helping that poor woman and I'm in a far better place than I used to be.  Times that about 1000 for what people in the midst of an anxiety do to themselves daily, if not hourly.  You can't go back and change what once was, that only happens in the movies.  As hard as it is, and I know it's hard, you need to accept the things that have happened and move forward having learned a lesson from it.

The Future
If you are constantly thinking about what ifs, what will bes, and generally living life in the future, you're showing anxiety.  This is where most of us anxiety sufferers live.  Well, I guess that's a beyond obvious statement!  Anticipatory anxiety is a horrendous thing.  Tell us we are about to go somewhere or do something and in 10 minutes time we've already played out the whole thing in our heads about 20 times.  We set ourselves up for failure in our heads before we even leave to go do something.  And what does this do?  Depends on where you are anxiety wise, but in a lot of cases it leads to a panic attack and then forces us to back out which then starts the past paragraph and we get depressed about it.  Either way we are going to feel like we are stuck.  The funny thing about the future and anticipatory anxiety is 99% of the time none of the things we played in our heads ever happen and more often than not, once we warm up to the situation, we end up having a good time.  I don't know why we insist on sabotaging ourselves every.damn.time but we do. 

Here's an example.  The husband says "hey we got invited to this picnic, let's go!"  Instead of saying "yeah ok, sounds like fun" my thought pattern went directly to "I won't know anyone there and no one is going to like me.  What if I have a panic attack there, people will think I'm crazy.  No one is going to talk to me, like my hair, like my make up or my clothes and they'll all be staring at me.  What if I say something stupid and people laugh at me?"  etc, etc, etc.  These thoughts start to scare me which start to release hormones and eventually will make me sick over the whole thing.  By the time I get around to answering my husband, I'm already nauseated, my heart is palpitating, I'm sweating, getting waves of fear and am probably on my way to a panic attack.  Not a whole lot of fun at all.  However, the only way to get past this and get better from this type of behavior is to feel the fear and do it any way.  You may feel awkward at first but trust me you'll be so damn proud of yourself for doing it!

The Present
Ok, let me try this paragraph again.  I typed it all out and blogger deleted it somewhere between me saving it and then posting it. 

At any rate, if you are soaking in the world around you, taking things one day at a time, and generally living life in the present, you are at peace. 

This a great place to be and one that you should be striving for in your anxiety disorder journey.  I'm not saying that every day is going to be kittens and sunshine, but if you can get to a point where the present moments start to out weigh the past and present, you are definitely on track!  A good thing to do is to start focusing on the positives in your day, or better yet purposely make time for them.  Go for a walk, actually go out and smell the roses, watch the clouds go by, play with your kids and pets.  Whatever it is you decide to do, as long as you are in the present moment and forgetting the rest, your mind, body, and soul will thank you for it.

Much Love and Light~

Tammy