I need a lot more time by myself. A lot more time. I need three or four nights a week with no obligations, and no mandated conversations, from the end of work until bed, unless I choose to step into such. That’s awkward if I am living with a partner.
I’m finding it quite healing to just do nothing. I don’t know how much of this I need. I could do a full week and that might help. I don’t know how to do this without disrupting the lives of people who are important to me. I sort of feel like I could use a month, or two.
Sound is harder for me than crowds or people. This is a big deal for me. I walked around it was around a lot of people today. It was okay. Later, I was sitting alone in a room watching a hockey game in silence. When I turned the sound back on my body visibly recoiled at the sound of the announcers and the game, at medium volume. I love sound , music, people’s voices . Some people live their life to music. I like to be able to choose when it’s there but I do better with silence; this weekend is reinforcing this to me. This is also true for talking, conversations. Some of it is the presence of sound at all. Some of it is volume. I can have the same type sound sometimes and do okay, but with a much lower volume. I need the freedom to partake, or walk away, to choose my engagement. I feel heavy stress when engagements are forced or not optional . Somehow I make it work when it’s my job. In my off time I need to regulate this , somehow.
How do I bring my anxiety down? I would prefer not to take psych meds on the regular but would that make my life better? Would it make my engagement with the people I care about better? Last time I started feeling like this I took a monster dose of mushrooms and it had a huge positive effect on me (after rocking my world). I can try that first but if that doesn’t do it I need to consider options.
Tough love has its place, but I need a more compassion and care, more gentleness, from a partner
How much of this has been financial stress bleeding into other areas of my life? I’m 51 and if I don’t fix my brain and soul right now, then the rest of my years don’t matter. Maybe I need to sell my house. Cash in hand would alleviate that financial burden. I don’t know what other factors are in play , who or where. I have spent way too long mostly confined in my house, mostly confined to Denver or Monument, mostly confined to Colorado.
Even sitting alone right now, existing in what should be a non-stressful moment, my brain and body carry anxiety. It shouldn’t be a struggle just to exist
What is the value in being observer? That seems to be my role. Especially as I age, and my health degrades. I’m not as much in a period of trying new things as much as deciding which existing things have been done for the last time already. This is a hard pill to swallow. Some people really need to be seen, to have a witness. I enjoy being that for them, but I need more engagement as I can get it.
Between finances, family health, changing relationship vibe, kids, challenges of another relationship, I’ve been living in a perpetual trauma state for two years. Of course I’m raw.
It’s been easy to look back at the last couple years and attribute a lot of the stresses to family health/responsibilities, caretaking, loss, grief, and the aftermath. Then the boys. Then the cohabitation change resulting in increased stress. I know I did my best and sometimes my best was painful. But one thing I need to acknowledge is that well it’s easy to look at the factors that have changed around me, and they were huge, I failed to look at the changing landscape of myself and the impact it was having on my mental health. As my mental health inched farther away from where I wanted to be, my stress is increased. The grief and stress of others increased, and there have been rough spirals. I’m trying to look at my own reactions with new eyes , through new eyes, to try to interpret it as I moved from motivated and supporting partner to wondering if I’ve had a psychotic break.