Kaleidoscoperefractions » medication

A meditation on anxiety

kaleidoscoperefractions — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:02:34 +0000

5/13/06

Gary took the boys to Connor’s game, so I have some time to myself. He did that specifically so I could have that, as a sort of Mother’s Day gift. Unfortunately I slept later than I wanted to; I’d like to have done the grocery shopping before they left; arriving home about the time where they’d just taken off. And so have the time alone in the house feeling unfettered. As it is, in “me” fashion, I am feeling “fettered”; by the things I need to do. Listen to a news program; continue my diary project, along with fold clothes and do the grocery shopping that I didn’t get to this morning. I guess this is a chance to examine how I respond (or react, whatever) to the anxiety of things that are incomplete. As I realized when I said I could be in the house unfettered, even if I didn’t have an impending shopping trip, I’d be “fettered” by the knowledge that they were coming back.

An interval here where I went and folded some clothes and came back to a message from Darlene that she’s feeling sick and can’t come tonight to babysit for a function Gary and I were going to. And I do feel more friendily-inclined. I don’t know if it’s because she’s sick and it brings out the nurturer in me, or if it’s another ledge out of feeling so unfriendly toward her in the wake of our making gestures toward each other. With each gesture being a step up because one builds on the other. One nice gesture leads to another, and sets the tone for the next. I probably should overcome my reluctance (how much is the force of habit) and see her a little more often to establish a less reluctant feeling as my baseline in regards to her.

While downstairs I did some considering about anxiety and remembered a book I’d started years ago that Dana recommended to me. I wonder if it is some sort of basic given built into our nervous systems, sort of underlying all emotions like a tone. Some people have insulation from it, by temperament, physiology, luck, coping mechanisms. For others it’s much more raw. And, part of out personality is how we manage it, or not. I guess its level is what determines how we are in this world. If we live like there’s always something to be afraid of, or feel safe in the world.

Reading Doria Russell’s book has acquainted me with a visceral understanding of the fact that there is a lot that is unsafe in the world. I’ve lived with that intellectual knowledge, and have been largely untouched by it, with the exception of how vulnerable I felt in the wake of Karen’s disaster. So I’ve been moving through life largely insulated from fear. And I get a glimpse of how paralyzing fear can be—because if the boom can be literally dropped on you at any moment, how can you move? Especially when we move at great speeds and with objects with lots of momentum, inches away from each other on a road and depend on each other’s mutual pact to stay safe.

I wonder if the wellbutrin is exaggerating this—that is raising my awareness of how fragile we are. Or if it’s a developmental step, seeing my own mortality (that’s maybe being heightened by the well butrin?)

I’m just seeing how anxiety is a powerful force in human emotion.

I think the above is sort of a microcosm of what I’m talking about—just one way anxiety manifests.

Anxiety seems like a jab, an impulse to do something. People who can govern that impulse seem to be calmer people.

I suppose one reaction to anxiety is to take a defensive, expressed as offensive, posture. Seeing something different heightens the base level and then people express that impulse as prejudices, say. Or they use that feeling as a base from which ridicule springs.

Here’s another example of anxiety. I talked to Gary a while ago and he said they would be running some errands after the game, home around 2 or 3. So, I’ve been hanging here, with the idea that I’ll leave to go grocery shopping around 1:30—thus not filling this time to myself with errands, but something I genuinely want to do. There’s a way that I feel that that’s not ethical, that it’s taking unfair advantage of Gary since he’ll come home with the boys and I won’t be here. I experience it as a raise in volume level—a call to action.

I had some other thoughts about anxiety. When it comes to choices (like going to the store now or not) there’s an increase in anxiety level and it’s partly driven by the fear of regret—of regretting what it is that I choose.

Anxiety is a foot on the gas pedal. And simultaneously on the brake—starting something and then pulling back from it.

Anxiety is—that is, other people’s anxiety is very annoying. It calls to my underlying substrate of anxiety, which if it responds, is uncomfortable. Darlene is a high anxiety person; so is my mother. Though both acknowledge that they’re “worriers”, they have little awareness of it as the force that drives many of their moment by moment actions that are difficult to deal with.

I used to say that my depression didn’t seem to have an anxiety component. But some of the things I’ve become aware of tell me that’s not true. I think I probably do manage my anxiety ok. It’s not a function inhibitor, though it kind of is a tax on my functioning. It’s just a slightly added weight to the stuff I do to be in the world.

Gary called and whatever thought I was going to put here is gone. I was on a thread of anxiety being driven by fear of regret; I think it’s also a sort of reflexive desire to do something to calm it:*RIGHT NOW* a sort of demand. I suppose it underlies a desire to protect, which goes deeper than worldly possessions; it’s about protecting some view of self. I’s about feeling that something isn’t complete—it’s about satisfying a demand.

Oh, I think what I was going to talk about is how I’m having more clarity about my own anxiety. I see it underlying some of the conflicts I have with the boys. Because there is a part of me that is demanding a circle be closed, which is why I’m frustrated when I’m interrupted. And, unfortunately, I’ve often chosen finishing the task over the child and made the child wait. This morning Scott wanted to look at the Waldo book with me, and I really wanted to be reading my own book. I stayed with him for a short while, then went in to go to the bathroom and used that as a point of exit from the story…though he wasn’t finished.

Anyway, reading the old diary, I see evidence of the same anxiety, expressing as conscientiousness, sort of hyper-conscientious (which has served me well when I’m working as a physical therapist). I see it in the religiosity, and my assuming the worst about myself. And of course I’ve already mentioned it when I remembered a compulsive shadow to some of my actions as a child, with the doors closed, the bugs squashed, that sort of thing. It has always been there, but I’m aware of it and looking at it now. I can see that it’s served me pretty well in many things, but it has worked against me too. It’s absence would result in some easing of conflicts, especially pace conflicts with my kids; it would remove the suffering I have from being interrupted because I’d no longer feel that I had to do something, like go online later and catch the phrase I missed in a news segment—and feel anxious about maybe forgetting it, as well as how to fit it in.

I guess that might be what’s driving my intense need to be alone is wanting to have a blank slate of time around me enough so I can see the shape of it, and then figure out how to fill it to fit my needs.

I was walking away and realized that it’s an integral part of my conflicts with Gary, too. Usually, when something happens, like he makes a remark that stings or treats me disrespectfully (not concealing the fact that he feels I’m in his way and is annoyed by that), it’s not so much that incident that causes the big rift; it’s what happens after. Because I do experience him treating me that way as a rift, and my impulse, partly compulsion, is to close the circle and heal it. He usually refuses to close the circle—brushes off my attempts, which I then pursue with more doggedness—because another rift has opened in his dismissing my attempts to close the first rift—and sometimes another and another and another.

So my inability to tolerate that opened circle contributes to the magnitude of our conflict. But I still can’t help but feel that allowing him to be disrespectful, even on those subtle energetic levels, is not a good alternative.

Perhaps the solution to that is to just state what he did: “You just told me to move away from the computer in a hurtful way” Perhaps if I just say it, then I could let it go and keep the conflict from widening? Would that satisfy my need to close the circle?

I want to look at this in a The Work context:

The belief I have is that Gary shouldn’t speak to me in such a way.

Is it true?

Fair and balanced

kaleidoscoperefractions — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 14:13:38 +0000

4/19/06

Yesterday was Gary’s and my 14th anniversary.

I had to give up some of my alone time today, and will have to tomorrow too. Visiting the kindergarten classes to try and get a sense of where Scott might belong: either Skyline school, or Trillium.

The visit to Trillium’s kindergarten was cut short today by it being the first nice day, and plans for an outing to the park. I didn’t mind.

We had a comfortable visit with Darlene on Saturday. Connor even hugged her as she was saying goodbye (then came over into my arms and said softly: “I did it!”). The prospect, as I said, of not having to deal with feelings of heaviness associated with contact with her is appealing; realistically, there’s going to be lots of contact with her over the next years and it’s nice to think they may not be burdened by these unpleasant feelings I’ve had this past year.

I still have a bit of that “caught between two currents turbulence” feeling about my feelings being revised. It’s a natural process though; I am not forcing them at all. I even considered it as an option to ask her to watch Scott on Tuesday next week when I go to his IEP meeting. As I said above, I’m not quite ready to give her that signal of friendship. What I mean by that is that asking her to watch Scott would mean signaling that I feel close enough to her to enter reciprocity in asking and giving favors. That’s what I’m not quite ready to signal, though I am closer to readiness than I was before she came to dinner Saturday. In the end I asked Ann to keep an eye on Scott while I go to the meeting.

OK, I felt a need to say all that: I guess in the interests of “fair and balanced” reporting, as well as noting in the same interests a bit of reluctance to write it. Just a bit of a hanging back that I had to actually overcome in order to do. It wasn’t too difficult to overcome.

04/20/06

I spent a couple hours this morning visiting the Skyline kindergartens and wondering where Scott might fit in.

I can sure see how children everywhere would benefit from smaller classes, especially at this age.

Anyway, I just consumed a few hours reading about oil pipelines, and beginning to really get it just how oil dependent the global economy, and especially western economy is. It would be difficult to assume other than that US foreign policy, particularly aggressive, has been driven by the objective of securing an oil supply. I suppose that largely that means controlling it.

04/24/06

I THINK it’s the 24th.

Time to myself curtailed today. I was going to observe the kindergarten at Trillium but they won’t be doing classwork which is what I really want to see.

Anyway, since I’d figured the morning was going to be mostly taken up anyway, I’d made mental plans for a haircut and loaded the car up with bottles and cans to return.

I realize this about myself; and this isn’t the first time I’ve realized this: When I know I have something to do, however major, or minor, I feel a compulsion inside to do it now. I want it done so I don’t have to think about it. Checking something off of my mental list gives me satisfaction. Having things ON my mental list causes anxiety.

I think I told my doctor that anxiety wasn’t really a troubling factor. I guess that’s not true. Anxiety is a force that spurs action to discharge tension. (It fills a short-term, that is, immediate need—to discharge tension—sometimes to the detriment of a greater, longer-term need.) I think being around children has helped me to see it in its early forms, as I can see how kids handle/tolerate the tension differently. I think anxiety underlies the competitive urge—the need to compete or ally oneself with someone who does. Making oneself slow down often can alleviate its effects.

Knowing that there’s a task awaiting at the end of some free time is a source of tension for me, as I feel the time slip away and the job loom. My hope is that if Scott’s full time in school next year that the 7 hours alone each day (assuming he goes to Skyline) will finally give me that feeling of having enough. That I’ll feel I have enough so that it doesn’t feel like a precious commodity that I have to husband carefully and watch how I spend it.

Very interesting. Talking to other parents about the kindergarten/s at Skyline. Having observed them both myself I would have to say that the first class was much more raggedy in terms of the kids’ behavior. I noticed lots of interactions going on among the children that went unobserved by the teacher—sometimes out and out aggressive behavior: pushing, hitting, even kicking—and there were more subtle things too, such as nudging or just plain bugging. The K/1 blend seemed far more orderly, with much less of those side currents going on and children largely getting along.

So, I talked to Rebecca the other day whose daughter is in the first class. She said she felt that the first class was less well controlled, and the teacher less pro-active than in the other class. In addition it’s a position that’s shared by two half time teachers. She felt that added a level of confusion to the class that wasn’t helpful to the kids. Rebecca gave me the name of another parent who has a kindergartner in the first class, and a first-grader in the k-1. Rebecca predicted this woman would agree that the k/1 was a better choice than the other.

So I called her last night. To my absolute surprise, she said she felt the k/1 teacher was NOT to be recommended (even though my friend Kathy recommended her pretty highly). She was surprised when I mentioned that the class was orderly—she said it was NOT. She said she didn’t know of any parent that liked this teacher, and she was certain that the next person I was going to call would echo those views. She tended to recommend the first kindergarten class as a dubious better choice and even suggested not sending Scott to Skyline kindergarten at all.

Then, when I called Terri I got a different response from the one Lindsay predicted. So funny. She expressed doubts about a k/1 setting in general but felt that the teacher was quite good as a purely kindergarten teacher. ! In fact, she was the most reassuring as far as my concern about Scott being a bit of a different drummer kind of kid—that his kind of personality would find welcoming space with that teacher.

A factor in the whole thing that I haven’t thought of is that the configuration next year may look different from this year. So that’s something to wait and see on too, in order to get input about what might be the best place for Scott.

OK, I had another insight about anxiety. About the knowledge of having a job to do—that it’s as if life doesn’t begin until it’s been discharged—done.
Sort of analogous to holding one’s breath. Get it over with and then I can relax and enjoy “real” life.

So I wonder if the Wellbutrin is exaggerating qualities that are already there, enabling me to see them, or if it’s creating the conditions for it in my nervous system.

A fuel for anxiety is a feeling of there not being enough. Yeah, I guess that fits with the time perception. For example, if I change lanes to go around a slow driver, but I’m going to need to be in that lane, I feel uncomfortable until I’m back in that lane…wanting to be positioned right well ahead of when it’s a necessity—fearing having to squeeze in at the last minute. Afraid there won’t be a place for me later.

OK, I want to go get the mail, and read for a bit before its time to get Scott.

Wake-up calls

kaleidoscoperefractions — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 01:49:37 +0000

9/27/05

The house is supposed to record today, the deed, that is, and then it is officially no longer ours (I keep thinking of it as mine). We should be called to be told; and unless we hear anything to the contrary it should be done by 5:00.

I was over there yesterday to meet the carpet guys. Then X came out to meet me from his house. They were going to go on a job, but he lingered some, talking with me. To my delight he responded with gladness to my suggestion that he come up to the house. He even said something about this week. So, for good or bad, there was some nice validation that maybe he enjoys my company like I do his.

I kept reminding myself that my thoughts and fantasies, pure, or not, are my business, and it’s also my business to keep them separate from my behavior. The uneasy part is wondering if sometimes, unconsciously to me, my behavior may be being shaped by them.

Because I suppose that the really ethical thing to do would be to stay far away from him, knowing that I am attracted to him, and it’s possible it’s a little mutual. I guess a consideration is if I can be content with the glow that comes from that attraction, mutual or not, without expecting anything further.

9/28/05

Alone in the house, which is kind of nice, except I’m not supposed to be alone in the house. Rick {our builder} was to have gotten here at 7—that’s what he said his plan is. And now it’s after 10. Various scenarios in my head interrupted my writing at this point.

I stopped by to drop off a book. I didn’t feel very whole within myself—just kind of scattered. But then today is the first day I haven’t needed to go over to the other house to either clean, or carry something back. So it makes sense that I’d be kind of jittery just with the pace of the last several months, and the effort this move has taken. I’m really not planning on moving again.

Maybe that’s part of the source of this heightened sexual feeling. Besides the medication…I think it has an effect too. Perhaps the way it stimulates I interpret as sexual.

He didn’t ask me to stay or offer me coffee and that’s fine…I was dropping by and I’m sure he had things to do. But he did say that he would return it directly to me, at my house. Now the book drop of the library is within a few blocks of his home. Maybe he just didn’t think of that. I suppose that if he were to call and say, “D-u-uh, I forgot all about the book drop. I’ll just use that!” then I’d know that most of this sigh, ‘fuss’ has all been silliness on my part, totally one-sided.

But the point is, I suppose what’s hanging me in there, is to warm myself by this glow that I feel, and to fantasize about that glow. But I don’t think I’d be a good “Other Woman” because even in my fantasies I don’t stop thinking about his wife. Then I remind myself that these are “just” fantasies, so in a fantasy, as long as it’s fantasy, I can imagine that his wife has given him permission.

This is fantasy, and probably one-sided, but I’m seeking that glow, and then I think I’m motivated by a desire to see how close to the line we come, of admitting mutual attraction, or revealing it somehow.

And that’s where I think maybe I’m doing wrong, and that it’s the best thing to just keep away. And the right thing. I was looking in my mind’s eye to see if I could find any literature where having sex with a married man, while married to someone else, turns out well, and I have to wryly smile that there’s not. That I can remember anyway. “Madame Bovary” comes to mind. I wonder if she was peri-menopausal.

I think some of this is an example of how my thoughts and fantasies DO influence my BEHAVIOR, in that they provoke a certain anxiety that causes me to behave a certain way. I feel fears that his wife is noticing that she’s hearing my name more than usual and may get a clue. Notice that I’ve been cropping up. I realize that any protective feelings I may sense from her are purely projection, and also in the realm of the fantasies.

I think this is just crazy one-sidedness gone a little nutty. I think he treats me the way he treats Val, and Ann, and Rob and Gary, for that matter. It’s kind of embarrassing, and I think I needed the insight into just how big the fantasies really are in my life and that they’re affecting my behavior.

I’m still with wanting an affair, I guess, but really he isn’t the right one. He would be if he weren’t married with kids. Like I said, it can’t be just anyone. It has to be someone who sparks that kind of warmth that I feel surrounding his presence, someone I genuinely like and laugh with. I have a feeling, that as in most marriages, an affair would devastate his, and it wouldn’t devastate mine. At best, the warmth of having such a side relationship would help me to tolerate a lot of the feelings that I have a lot with Gary’s and my interaction. At worst, I could get caught but I don’t think he would divorce me. It could function as his wake-up call. In a way it’s the only leverage I have in a relationship with someone who ignores things that are unpleasant. And harbors grudges and acts passively aggressive. They’re things that make my marriage to him unpleasant in a moment-by-moment way, but they’re not really divorcible offenses. When for the hundredth time he’s not followed through on something we’d agreed on, I may WISH I could divorce him, but it would be laughable to divorce him on the grounds that he hadn’t taken the trash out. It’s the little things, in total and a mass, that make me dislike my marriage to him. And divorce on account of those things is not really an option, and besides it would be yet another huge change in the lives of our boys. I can tell him that each time something like this happens that it kills something in our relationship, but he’s already ignored that leverage enough. He just absorbs the colder atmosphere between us and goes on. An affair says, “HEY!!! You’ve not been paying attention! This is for real how distant I feel from you. This is the reality that all those little unresolved exchanges over the years have led us to. That an affair feels like a viable alternative!” I don’t think I would care if he had an affair either. I think it would be fine with me, just so he doesn’t bring home any diseases, and vice versa.

It’s just my luck that the person I’ve been drawn to have an affair with is the absolute wrongest person.

But I’m silly in any sense to think that this is mutual.

So what are the possibilities in this situation?

1) It is totally one sided and the product of a silly medicated perimenopausal woman—completely unrequited except as neighbor/friends.

2) There is a mutual attraction that will go completely unspoken.
a) Now that we’re no longer neighbors it will go its own way and die
b) We’ll continue to get together and continue to act like friends and not get any closer to that line, but still all unspoken, so it’s not clear if he IS mutually attracted to me, or not

3) There’s a mutual attraction we acknowledge
a) we discuss it and acknowledge it’s not a good thing and resolve to manage our feelings and our behavior
B) We discuss it and throw caution to the winds and act on it. Not likely, since I believe he really loves his wife.

So I haven’t been able to have fantasies of him without seeing myself as a homewrecker.

I suppose this is a wake-up call for ME, that I think so little of the marriage to Gary that I’m going to act as if his behavior has nullified and voided our contract to be monogamous.

If he behaved toward me the way he did when he still liked me, I can see his behavior deteriorating now, when he doesn’t act like he likes me either. That whole thing with expecting me to guess that he wanted pictures of the house with the family in it and indicating that he thought it should have been a no-brainer that I knew that—that’s what people do when they dislike someone.

So I want an affair. Unfortunately with the wrong person, but nevertheless I know I want one by my feelings of want in this situation.

It’s curious to me that I keep flashing on the “nothing good can come of this” theme. Thinking of Madame Bovary, the famous adulteress. Remembering Erica Jong’s 70’s book, “Fear of Flying: and that main character’s search for “The Zipless Fuck” I don’t remember anything else about that book, but it seems there was some sort of come-uppance for the main character.

I do feel like I too am looking for a “Zipless Fuck” I’m not interested in romance, or courtship, or re-marriage and someone else parenting my boys. I’m looking for good sex with someone I like, whose presence brings a spark, and who I can laugh with. So I wonder if there is such a thing. Maybe even for years? A marriage with another relationship on the side. Again, it doesn’t seem to have any precedent in literature of working out well. Who am I to think I’ll be different?

Rick came a while ago with a partner and they’re working, and it’s beginning to get noisy so it’s probably better that I go take a walk.

A little later. The cable guy came to put a wire in downstairs so the eventual television will have a cable hook-up. He had an interesting manner, quite a presence that I noticed the second I opened the door. We talked a bit when he finished so I could sign the papers—he did a really nice thing in that he billed this as a trouble call that won’t cost us the service charge. We talked for a bit before he left, and he said, “You have really blue eyes.” He said it in an admiring sort of way. It sort of shocked me, but in a refreshing way. It was actually very nice.

It makes me wonder if something’s sticking out of me. Some pheromone or something.