Acceptance

Many years ago, There was a cross stitch that hung in the laundry room in our house. It didn't matter where we moved, it almost always ended up on the wall in the Laundry room. It was a house and the script on it was a shortened version of the Serenity Prayer. The text reads as follows:

"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference."

The entire prayer can be seen here at http://www.cptryon.org/prayer/special/serenity.html if you are interested. I'm mainly going to focus on the part that I posted and how it relates to my anxiety.

At my last Counseling session, the Counselor and I discussed the cycle of frustration that I have when my anxiety acts up. Here's how it goes.

Twinge of anxiety
Awareness of anxiety 
Attempt to divert anxiety
Frustration at feeling the anxiety
Worse twinge of anxiety
Then the cycle starts again. 

The more frustrated I get, the worse the anxiety typically gets. It comes in waves, and ebbs and flows, eventually either overcoming my efforts and escalating to a full blown panic attack, or going away slowly without the panic.

What we discussed was breaking the cycle by adding in acceptance of the anxiety rather than going on the offensive and getting frustrated, thereby making it worse. 

So this week, when I have felt anxiety, rather than getting frustrated with it, I have simply accepted the fact that it is there, and moved on. It has not been easy. It IS getting easier though.

This week at work, we moved several people into the new Burkhart Center for Autism research that is located next to the College of Education. Over the course of Monday and Tuesday, we moved and installed 13 PC's, installed 4 new ones, plus we also moved another 10 or so Internally in the College of Education today. So that's roughly 20-30 (if I missed any in my count) moves in a 3 day period. I did not move all the PC's by myself, I had the help of my coworkers, but I wanted to give an idea of the scale of the project.

My anxiety is typically at its very worst when I am surrounded by Chaos. Chaos you say? Sounds like this week has been a perfect storm for your anxiety. 

Yes, Indeed it was! 

Not only was I stressed about the moves, this is the first major move since I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. I was totally unsure of how my sugars were going to react to all the physical activity, and as a result, that added to my anxiety. The last thing I wanted to do was pass out in the middle of the moves! Fortunately, I was vigilant and didn't have any sugar issues during the moves.

I DID have some anxiety, especially on the first day and the beginning of the second. After the session I had, I was anxious (ha ha) to implement what I had learned. So when I got the first flash of anxiety Tuesday morning, I was like, "Oh, hi there! I'm sorry, but I'm a bit busy here. If you don't mind, take a seat over there, and I'll be with you in a minute"

I had the twinge, the awareness, and then the acceptance of the anxiety.

I Accepted the Anxiety, had the Courage to try a new approach, and gained Wisdom when I succeeded in controlling the anxiety. In the end, I had peace and serenity and was able to do my work without any further issues. In fact, since I've been more acccepting of the anxiety, I've had far less problems dealing with it. Looking back at the Cognitive Based Therapy, acceptance was one of the things we talked about the most, and when I did accept the anxiety, I eventually owned it.

I think I'm going to be ok now. I have hope for the future, and look forward to exercising my new "acceptance muscle"!