your mind made up

This pandemic has me thinking a lot about times when worry got in the way of my regular routine. Worrying has the ability to take over my mind, take me to dark places, and even cause physical symptoms that can be crippling.

Raise your hand if you’ve played out entire scenes in your head, about how badly a situation is going to play out…thankfully I’m not alone. Almost 4 years ago I was struggling pretty often with anxiety attacks. I would create these crazy situations in my mind, that really had nothing to do with anything, they were just these “what if” scenarios that would pop up out of nowhere. I remember my first anxiety attack so vividly.

I was in my car headed to work. It’s generally a 20 minute commute, but it was the morning rush hour, so make that about 45 minutes. I’m slowly driving over the Tappan Zee bridge listening to the radio, sipping my coffee and looking out the window at the bridge construction. I suddenly had this thought of, what if the bridge comes crumbling down – I can’t be the only person who’s had that thought – let’s continue.

I shook it off, because that’s crazy. I started to play out what’s going on at work for the day: what needs to get done, who’s working, what are they going to do, all the usual thoughts. I began to feel this pain in my chest, like I couldn’t take in a full breath. So I started to try and inhale really deeply and slowly, and while I was doing this I’m thinking “what is going on? Are you ok? Why aren’t you breathing normal?”

I turned up the radio and sing along with what’s on, to get my mind off of my breathing. I grabbed my coffee, take a few sips, and I felt my heart racing. Literally, super focused on my heartbeat and couldn’t pay attention to anything else. I was sitting in the car, why was my heart rate going up?! I called my mom thinking, maybe if I talk to someone I’ll calm down.

“Hey sweetie, what’s up?” I told mom that I was just driving to work and wanted to see how she’s doing. We talked for maybe a minute, but really I have no idea how long we were talking because I couldn’t think of anything other than my chest pains and abnormal breathing. I finally said to her “Mom, I have no idea what you just said because I think I’m having a heart attack!” Probably not the morning phone call a parent wants to get from their kid. I pulled over and was now in full panic mode.

I won’t bore you with the rest of our convo, but I will say she tried her best to calm me down. She assured me, that it sounded like I was having an anxiety attack and not to drive myself to the emergency room (because I told her that’s what I was going to do); she said to take a few minutes and finish driving to work, since I was nearly almost there.

Over the course of 2 months I had 4 more situations like this, so I decided to talk to my doctor – just to make sure I wasn’t actually having a heart attack.

Good news, no physical health issues! Based on what I shared with him, he did suggest that I evaluate my lifestyle because I was having symptoms of high anxiety. I was in shock, it didn’t make sense why I was struggling. My job wasn’t demanding or stressful, I was working out pretty regularly, my eating habits weren’t bad. He advised that I keep a journal of my day, to see if I could pinpoint triggers. To be fully transparent, he also advised to exercise more frequently, take vitamins, get a full night’s rest, and then see a psychiatrist if this continued to happen so frequently…the one thing I stuck to was the journal.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long for me to figure out what triggered me to spiral:

1. Feeling trapped and isolated: all of my attacks began in the car while stuck in traffic, and it didn’t matter if I was going to work or leaving work. That bumper-to-bumper traffic had me feeling like if I needed help, I couldn’t get to anyone and no one could get to me.

• solution: though I don’t have the ability to control traffic, I did accept it as part of my day. I found that meditation helped to clear my head before hitting the road; a quick 2-5 minutes to shut down my mind, went a long way. I also made it a point to call friends and family while I was in the car, to prevent my mind from wandering into anxious thoughts.

2. Drinking too much coffee: likely the core of the issue. I’d start and end my day with a cup. First thing in the morning I’d make a cup for the road, then I’d stop at Starbucks as I pulled into work, I’d grab another at lunch, then someone would take their break later and ask if I wanted anything…yea, grab me a coffee. My day would conclude at home with a small decaf cup so that it wouldn’t keep me up late (I’m giving myself a major eye roll too).

• solution: I took myself down to no more than 3 cups per day; that’s 1-2 in the morning and 1 with lunch. I also had the this mind blowing realization, that I was 31 years old and caffeine was actually affecting my body! Not only did I have to limit the quantity, but I had to stop taking in caffeine by 3pm in order to be able to come down at the end of the day.

3. Insomnia: the coffee intake of course led to this anxiety trigger. Since I don’t work a traditional 9-5, I get home at various hours throughout the week. I didn’t give myself a regular routine because my days and weeks were never the same. On average, I was falling asleep at about 3am!

• solution: regardless of my work schedule, I had to commit to creating routines. I began to force myself out of bed at the same time everyday and per the doctors orders, workout in the back half of my day to help me feel more fatigued closer to bedtime. On my days off of work, I started the day with a lighter workout and ended with a small group class at a local anti-gravity yoga & fitness studio. This helped me start getting to bed at a reasonable hour and even helped with my quality of sleep.

I’m super thankful that my doctor advised me to journal, it was an easy tip that had helped me through other issues in the past. It’s incredible how easily you can forget the steps you took to get through something else, when you’re going through something new.

Keeping record of my day isn’t the only tip that I still use. My commitment to staying connected with my people is a big help too. Sometimes you’re not looking for advice, you’re just looking to get your thoughts out in the open so that you can get them out of your head and off of your chest. There have been so many times that I’ve said to someone, “I’m going to talk and I don’t need an opinion, I just need to say it out loud so that I can move on”. And I do the same when people come to me – “do you want to know what I would do, or do you just want me to listen?”

Since that tough time in my life 4 years ago, I’ve determined that the best way to get past being worried is to skip the “what if” stage. When I’ve identified my triggers and determined what simple change I can make to prevent or limit these factors, is when I can be sure my mind is made up and move on to the next thing.