When I started going back to therapy a couple years ago my therapist told me that I function on a high level of anxiety disguised as energy. Think of the energizer bunny except that instead of the way he's presented in the commercial, reality is, eventually those batteries die and the bunny crashes. That's me.
Anxiety entered my life at a very young age. It started as a coping mechanism and eventually became such an ingrained part of who I was that I thought it was normal.
I recall nights I'd be laying in bed and my mind would be on overdrive, anxious about all the things I had to do, what I had on the agenda tomorrow, what might come my way and how I would handle it... This would push me out of bed to work for hours. Take that "energy" and "get ahead."
Lies.
That wasn't energy.
You will never get ahead.
You have no clue what tomorrow will bring so how can you plan for it?
Might as well be speaking in Morse code to my anxious self because it wasn't translating. Some days it still doesn't.
Take now for instance, my son is at the tail end of a developmental leap and possible sleep regression. The sleep regression might be the leap - I don't know. What i know is that it's causing me to be overly anxious along with all the other things I'm trying to juggle. Sunday night I went to bed only to toss and turn all night with thoughts of everything I had to do the next morning before a meeting and the super busy week ahead. Add to it waking up in the middle of the night for an hour or two repeatedly trying to get my son to go back to sleep (my husband helped too). I was so sleep deprived Monday that I could barely put together a sentence by the end of the day. Thinking I'd crash hard that night I found myself tossing and turning again - I was anxious and anticipating my son waking up in the middle of the night again. I myself was in a regression and falling back to old habits by trying to anticipate his next move.
So here I am, beyond exhausted, little to no patience and struggling to get it together or let go of this anxiety. I feel a big ugly cry coming on. I could really use that off switch right about now or a nap. A really good nap.
