Monthly Archives: November 2012

Election Night Anxiety

(Nov. 6, 2012)  Yup… my anxiety is up as the results start to come in.  This happens every 4 year to my brain.  I had a session scheduled for tomorrow morning, and just like 4 years ago, I had to move it.  I should have realized when I made it, that I will be up too late.

Today, I am feeling more relaxed.  I know the right-wing hysteria will continue, and I will have to keep trying to avoid it.  I just can not handle their views.  There is no logic to them, and they have a hard time with the truth.  But that is a topic for my other Blog.

There was a time in my life when I was happy to argue about politics… that time is long gone.  Now it raises my anxiety so much, so fast, I crash out.  I have even unfriended a few people on Facebook because of it.  I don’t want to argue.

I have learned to fight where I need to, and back off when I can.  But  I can not handle argument much anymore.  I worry about the future of the world as well as our country, and it matters to me how we move forward.  It matters a lot.

The greater the importance of the issue, the greater the potential anxiety in dealing with people who don’t get it.  I can not, and will not deal with those people.  Some people will not learn… I can not stop that.

So now that the election is over, I can relax a bit.  I do not need to worry so much about getting into an argument about politics.  There will be less to avoid.  I am happier today.

Nightmares

I frequently have terrible nightmares, that leave my shaken, and shaking for hours.  It happened last night.  Usually my nightmares are about my life… often for some reason I have had to go back to high school, and graduate again.  I of course struggle, and am sometimes trying to teach as well.

My most common nightmare is about teaching – especially about having to teach classes I know nothing about.  And/or being totally unprepared for the classes I know.  These dreams go back to when I was teaching – especially bad during the weeks before school opened in September.  I have had problems with all kinds of nightmares for over 30 years.

Last night’s was very unusual – it was about observing an alien invasion of Earth.  I was in a position to affect who would be allowed to live.  Enough said.  I can get over the unusual nightmares more easily than the ones about teaching.  In those I am always a failure, with many people pointing it out to me.

They usually occur right before it’s time to get up, so I remember them especially well.  And I wake up during the nightmare, and fall back asleep resuming right where I left off.  Sometimes I dream I have woken up, and real life gets mixed into the nightmare.  There are times when I am not sure if I am awake, or still dreaming.

It’s not fun.  I am a med that for a while helped, but I guess my brain got accustomed to it, and it no longer helps.  So I just have to deal with it.  Fun…

I Became a Shadow…

It is hard to be treated as no-one.  I grew up being treated as someone who was getting it all wrong.  I was treated as if everything I believed in, did not matter.  How I was behaving was wrong, from the start, with no consideration.  I had to live by someone else’s rules.  But I was never able to live up to that standard… because that was not me.

And of course, it did not work well for me.  And it does not work any better today.  When people treat me differently… for whatever the reason… I feel that past creeping into my life.  It does not matter who I am, it only matters how I behave.  I can not live that way.  It almost destroyed my life.  I am not always as I appear to be… no-one is.

I work very hard at treating everyone the same as I have always.  I can not understand their situation if I predetermine how things will go.  I am not always successful… but I try.  I know I should not treat people by my simple interpretations of how they are behaving.  I wish I could do better at doing this.  It’s not fair to presume how people will behave because of outside circumstances.

I try.  I want to treat people according to who they are on the inside – always.  Not according to how they may be reacting to things I can’t know.  Everyone has issues going on in their brains, that I can not possibly know about… no matter how close we may be.

I lived as a shadow of what I could have been in my life.  I will not ever attain what I could have done.  I am what I am, and treating me otherwise will result in a disconnect.  I have been thru enough.

SO… I will NOT be treated differently than I am.  No-one has the perception to know where my brain is.  Listen.

 

NOTE:: There are some issues I have a hard time being patient with no matter what.  Politics can be one of them.  I do not have the strength to fight some battles.  I pick and choose.