Anxiety

Anxiety. Ask me 10 years ago, as a 17 year old if I had ever felt it and I would have told you no. Ask me 5 years ago, as an engaged, almost college graduate if I had ever felt anxiety and I would have told you no. I may have said that I have been stressed, I've had struggles, but never have I experienced anxiety.

Now this isn't true. I can tell you today that I had most definitely experienced anxiety. I can even look back and remember specific moments that I felt anxiety. The problem is anxiety had this stigma to me, to many I'm sure, and this narrow definition of basically someone who had panic attacks. It meant something was wrong with you. It meant you weren't emotionally stable. These were my subconscious thoughts on the matter back then.

Fast forward to after Olivia was born and we had moved to Utah. New baby, new life, new home, away from friends, family, familiarity, and the start of a new phase in life. I started experiencing intense anxiety, though I didn't know that's what is was when it first started. I just knew something was wrong and I definitely wasn't ok. Then I started having panic attacks. I remember the first one I had. I was nursing Olivia for almost an hour trying my hardest to just get her to fall asleep. The second I got her to sleep I walked straight through the living room muttered to John I couldn't breathe and had to go outside and went straight outside. I couldn't seem to catch my breath and I felt super panicky. The fresh cold air felt good. I walked around awhile till I felt I could kind of breathe again and went back inside. I still didn't feel ok but I could breathe. At the time I hated it, I thought something was wrong with me, I felt lost, had no idea how to fix myself, and could barely barely talk to John about how I was feeling let alone anyone else. It made it really hard for me to connect with people and the isolation seemed to make it so much worse.

Time went on and the constant intensity of it passed. Over the last few years I have had moments/days where I feel the intensity creeping back in. I haven't had a panic attack since Olivia was a baby but I've had bouts every so often where I can feel myself getting close to having one.

Anxiety is a funny thing. The more you see it as a problem and try to fix it the worse it becomes. Trying to fix it just gives you anxiety or about having it or not knowing what to do and it's almost cyclical. Perhaps because often you can't describe exactly what you are feeling or why and that is frustrating.

Recently I realized I experience anxiety a lot more than I would like the admit. I used to say it was triggered by the stress of Olivia's first few months, her dairy allergy, colic, and hospital admittance, as well as moving in the midst of all that to a different state. The truth is, I've had it for as long as I can remember I just didn't realize that's what it was. I have an overall social anxiety and certain situations I feel it worse than others.

The last month or two, it's become way more frequent. Postpartum is definitely a trigger for me. This time around it isn't as bad, at least not yet, but it is becoming more constant and it's rough. Though recognizing anxiety is what this is has helped me a ton in itself. Having anxiety is not something easily described. It's not something I feel like I can fix. Defining it, labeling it makes it easier to live with, easier to move forward despite it's embrace but I'm not sure it's something I would ever be able to fully escape. Manage yes; overcome, I don't think so. It's how my brain reacts to stress. And it's definitely not something I can just "get over" or "ignore".

So, how do I combat stress? Being in nature or even just outside helps a ton. Going on a run helps. Listening to calming music. Taking in the moment seems to be the key, at least for me. But I'm not an expert, and most of the time it's just waiting, hoping for it to pass.

I decided to write this because anxiety and it's friends depression have huge stigmas. People do not talk openly about them. Why though? Whether someone has chronic anxiety and/or depression or situational, we all have or will experience both in our lives and if we talk about it when it happens we won't feel so broken from it. We won't feel so isolated.

Meant to be

I've had something on my mind a lot lately. I've been wanting to write about it but I'm not sure how to get it all out coherently. So, this is my disclaimer. Bear with me for a sec.

Right now life is a little crazy. John has had a few things at work that are keeping him a little late and his calling at church takes up a lot of time. It's nothing new not having him around a ton. Since we moved to Utah for law school 3.5 years ago this has been our lives. Between the first year of law school overload, second year with all the extracurricular and being in a bishopric, third year with school, work, and extracurricular, and then work and studying for the bar we for sure have accustomed our life to enjoying the time we have together no matter how limited that may be.

The other night John was gone late so Olivia, Evelyn and I went on a walk after dinner. It was warm, the sun was setting, and the fall colors were gorgeous. It got me reminiscing on all the different places we have lived the last few years and all the different views we've had on our walks. Going on walks quickly became a thing to pass the time while John was away and I was alone with a baby. Being away from family and friends was hard and I definitely felt very alone those first few years after we moved to Utah.

My mind jumped to now. We made it through law school, now there are the two girls and John is still insanely busy. Those years in law school I always looked to the future, yearned for the future when school would be done and I'd finally have my husband back. Gratefully, my perspective has changed.

Now, though I often struggle with longs days just me and the girls and I pass them off the moment he gets home or put them to bed early on John's really late nights, I no longer am waiting for the day it changes. I no longer feel the same loneliness. I no longer wish desperately we could go back to the days of just the two of us working together and spending every moment together or try to figure out any way we can move back home to where friends and family are.

Now I can't say I don't miss those things sometimes, or often, but it's no longer a feeling of desperation,more nostalgia. But I digress.

As we were on that fall walk and I reminisced about the many walks over the past few years that did not include John, I felt overwhelmingly grateful. Grateful to live in areas that it was safe to go on those walks, grateful for the beauty around me, grateful for the memories with Olivia and now Evelyn. But more I was grateful for my husband. Yes he may have any responsibilities that take him away from us but boy am I grateful for that. How lucky am I to have a husband who is hardworking and trustworthy. How lucky am I to have a husband who, when given a responsibility, gives his all and aims for success. How lucky am I that I have a husband who is so busy and still takes the time to play with our girls, pick up the house, and hang out with me in the evenings.

Our life together is going to get more and more busy. It wouldn't be wise of me to wish away the time now in hopes of a time in the future where we go back to less busy days.  That's not how life works, there's always going to be more, it seems it grows exponentially as time goes on. Today, here, this is the best day, tomorrow the new best day, and so it will continue. Life may get insanely difficult, even seemingly impossible at times, but the present moment is always the best. Wishing that away is a foolish trick we do to ourselves. Likewise, today is better than yesterday, or last month, year. The past is just that, it can't be relived, so it's impossible to be better than the present moment.

It's funny to imagine if I were to go back 10 years and think about what I wanted for my life. Would it be better than what I have now? I don't think so. Life has a funny way of taking our dreams and giving us back something we could never have imagined. If we choose to embrace it, it most often turns out for the better.

Like I said at the beginning, I wasn't sure exactly how to write this or where this would take me but I hope my ramblings make some sort of sense.

As a side note. Today marks 6 years since the day John and I became bf/gf and you better believe I went back and read my post from a few years ago when I wrote out our story and I CANNOT believe how gutsy I was with John. (Here's the link to that. https://thebabysellers.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-making-of.html) It totally was not like me to be so willing to put myself in potentially super embarrassing situations. Goes to show you he was definitely the guy for me. Boy do I love him.

Choose to be Happy

Lately, I have been listening to a lot of podcasts and reading books about the science of happiness, positivity, and optimism.

Did you know happiness is a science? It seems so crazy when you say that but when you really think about happiness, what it entails and how we achieve it, it is easy to understand why it is a science.
I have been intrigued by this science recently because I have been struggling "finding" happiness in the day to day routine, finding ways to be positive in light of disasters that seem to be coming back to back and the choices of our country's leaders, and being optimistic in the future. That last one isn't about my future with my family, but rather the future of the world we live in.

All of this uncertainty led me to want to discover what truly drives happiness, positivity, and optimism in our brain. By nature I am a researcher, when I have questions or concerns I generally search until I come up with the answers that resonate best with me.

This morning, as I was listening to a particular podcast, a memory popped into my head. This memory is from high school, I believe my junior or senior year. I had this friend that while he could have fun and enjoy himself he truly believed that an overall state of happiness was not possible "for someone like him". To this day I am not sure what he meant by that. I believe to a core that we are all deserving for happiness to be our natural state. Circumstances will arise that feelings of anger, sadness, anxiety, guilt, ect will be appropriate and will drive us through these situations, but at the end of the day our life should be happy. Getting back to my memory. My friend would say things like, "why are you always happy", or "how are you always happy". The response I gave him was always the same, "happiness is a choice". He would then say, "well, my life isn't perfect like yours". Most of the time I brushed that reply off. One day, it really got to me and I kind of exploded at him. My life was definitely not "perfect". I did not grow up in the picture perfect family. My parents had divorced when I was young, as a result our home was sold and we moved to two tiny apartments, I was split between my parents, we did not have a lot of money, I had experienced deaths of loved ones, and I could go on. I told him all this to show my life was not perfect, no one's life is perfect. Then I told him that the circumstances we live do not create our happiness. Happiness is something we choose despite those things.

How funny that as a teenager I was so aware of that. I knew happiness was a choice and I chose it daily. The podcasts and books I have been reading basically all agree on that, we choose. The circumstances of our life do not determine our happiness, or whether or not we have the ability to be positive or optimistic. We choose. We choose how we will react to the cards we are dealt. The poorest person in the world, the richest person in the world, those with many friends, few friends and no friends, married, divorced, perpetually single, children or not, dream job or not, all have the same capacity to feel happiness.

We are in control of our own feelings. Our feelings are our brain reacting to a situation, we are in complete control over how we react to a situation. Now of course it is completely appropriate and normal not to be happy all of the time. We need to feel sadness, anger, stress. We need to be able to experience the full range of emotions to work through situations, to grow and learn from our experiences, but we do not have to allow those feelings to control our life. We do not have to allow our life to be anything we don't want it to be. It is completely up to us how we choose to see our life.

I kind of went on a tangent there but I guess what I'm trying to say is this life is ours. Happiness, positivity, and optimism is ours to have if we train our brain to react that way. Life happens, life is not perfect, perfection does not equal happiness, choice does.

How we all choose to get there will look different but it all starts with the decision to be a happy person. I love that. I love that it is my choice and no matter what happens in this life, no matters the choices others make that may or may not determine what occurs in my life, it is always my choice to be happy, positive, and optimistic.

So, today I choose happiness because I can.