Just as I was starting to mow the lawn on Saturday my sister called. The nursing home had just called her saying dad was very confused and it “might help if someone would visit him”. No guilt with that last line. She was concerned about him but also felt bad for not going to see him that day. Since they were in the middle of a lake out of town, she asked if I would go?
Actually ran 4.5 miles the other night without stopping once. Woo-hoo. So I am officially patting myself on the back. Yes, that’s an ice cold Corona light (with extra limes) in my hand. I’m a believer in rewarding yourself for a job well done. I felt so good afterwards that Cosmo and I went for a drive to get an accurate measurement of the distance.
I’d been doing just (don’t minimize your efforts!) 2 miles but finally felt energized enough after work that I thought I’d try to go for it. It helped a lot that we had cooler weather and lower humidity too. Still if a 51 year young guy who sits at a desk all day can do it, so can you.
Well, in re-reading this post I find it’s not the most uplifting, so feel free to skip it. You won’t hurt my feelings. I usually can suck it up and at least try to be positive & encouraging but I’ve just been a little worn out lately. Overwhelmed too. Sometimes it’s a little difficult to keep a stiff upper lip you know?
Yesterday I traveled to the great city of Wichita, Kansas to help my son move. He just graduated from barber school and is moving back home to work in an old school barber shop downtown.
As with most trips I found myself worrying about my truck breaking down. Not that it’s prone to that. It’s just that it has 127k and seems due for a major repair and well, I tend to catastrophize. Black dogs tend to not see things as they are, but imagine things as they might be for the worse.
Lazy Sunday video post - but it is an excellent illustration of what some black dogs bring with them.
The next time you try to explain to a friend or family member what an anxiety/panic attack feels like just show them this video. The anxiety would be seeing the grass move and thinking something bad is going to happen but not quite sure what it is. The panic is when the tiger jumps out at you. Of course with panic/anxiety there is no tiger, there is no threat at all. Our fight or flight thermostat has just gotten reset to a higher normal so our mind tells us to “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” when we just going about our everyday lives.
Post-traumatic stress disorder was in the news recently. There appears to be a correlation between concussions and PTSD especially if the injury involved a loss of consciousness. My heart goes out to these soldiers.
Both of my grandfathers were in WWI but it was only my dad’s father that I believe had PTSD. It made sense as he saw much more combat than my mom’s father (pictured here) who was in a cooking outfit. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there’s not any photos of my other grandfather in uniform. The war must not have held any good memories for him.
Interesting story about the genes and worry.
I once read about something called ‘impostor syndrome‘ where outwardly successful people feel that if others only knew the truth about them, they would be sunk, their life would be over. All of their success in life was just a fluke and had nothing to do with their intelligence, creativity, work ethic or the type of person they were. They don’t feel successful on the inside and don’t feel good about who they are.
Now imagine feeling like this with a black dog too. That’s a double whammy and we fear if others only knew, we’d be done for. We feel bad about feeling bad. It’s like compound interest with our emotions.
An eloquent little exercise to help break anxiety by my friend at Devyou.com
It’s good to know the ins and outs of how and why something works when you’re learning a new skill. In teaching martial arts I would explain how to do a particular move and why it should be done a certain way. “Move this way with your whole body, where you are at your strongest, against this point on your opponent, where they are weakest.” There are many ways to do something but usually there’s one way that is more efficient and effective than others. That’s what we were all trying to learn.
Ah-ha or Analysis Paralysis
