My husband has been gently letting me know that I'm not acting like my normal self lately.

Intellectually, I realize that I can handle whatever life throws at me. I know that I'm surrounded by supportive people who love me. I know I'm smart. And I'm aware of all the accomplishments I've done. Nevertheless, I constantly have this feeling of stress and anxiety. It's exhausting.

I have insomnia that keeps me from getting more than 4 hours of sleep. I lay in bed replaying events from my past, like hurtful things that happened to me and hurtful things that I did to others or myself. It wears on me and makes me feel like I'm destined to be unworthy of anything good and incapable of succeeding at anything. I have a tremendous amount of anger, sadness, and guilt.

When I do fall asleep, I have nightmares. Most of them are either about somebody doing something cruel to me for no reason. Some of them are about some huge failure on my part causing something horrible to happen.

I had a panic attack the other day, but as soon as I figured out what it was, it stopped.

My OCD is getting extremely frustrating. I'm so tired of having to check things and clean things and check things again and put everything in the right place. Sometimes I just say, "I'm not going to do it," and I try to do something else instead, but I can't really focus on anything else. I have to wait for the anxiety to pass or until I'm sure that everything is OK. I'm trying very hard to not let things get worse.

My emotions have been extremely close to the surface, that I have a hard time holding them back. I saw a little girl crying the other day because she was scared to go to gymnastics class, and her dad was telling here that she was making a big deal out of nothing, and that made me break down right there.

The OCD and panic attacks get worse when there are issues that I'm not dealing with, usually issues that involve anger, guilt, and doubting my own abilities to do things right. So now I'm trying to deal with those issues.

It's just so exhausting.

See kids, even therapists, life coaches, counselors, teachers, doctors, and other "here's how to improve your life" gurus have issues. (The ones who don't are just pretending they don't.)

Labels: My Life