Anxiety and Stress

The following post was originally posted in late 2018. I have updated it and made some changes to it. It absolutely feels right for what we are going through right now.

About 7 years ago I started teaching patients about pain using a neuroscience approach. While doing this, more and more patients were trusting me with their complex pain stories. At the same time, I wasn’t sleeping well due to some health issues that my son was going through (he is completely healthy and recovered today). Before you know it, the stress of everything caught up with me and I began to have panic attacks.

Diagnosis: anxiety

Two panic attacks happened while driving and one happened in the dentist’s chair—that one landed me in the hospital. I won’t go into a lot of detail but my panic attacks were uncomfortable to say the least. After that I developed significant anxiety around driving and the dentist (go figure). Thus, began my quest to gain control of my life again! I started with my primary care physician who gave me Xanax to bring me down from a significantly bad episode. After him, I went to a naturopath who gave me supplements which only upset my stomach. I quit eating cheese and beef and gluten to help with nausea. Then I saw an acupuncturist who helped calm me down a lot at the first visit and slowly I was able to lie still for longer periods of time but the panic attacks continued. Finally, I saw a cardiologist who assured me my heart was fine but still put me through a battery of tests which freaked me out.

Self-care here I come!

Ironically no one actually used the term ‘anxiety’ or diagnosed me with having ‘panic attacks’, I did. When I finally went to a therapist I started to heal. My therapist spent many weeks working with me to get past the most traumatic event—the panic attack in the dentist’s chair which landed me in the hospital. Since then I have been able to successfully be in the dentist chair for multiple procedures including oral surgery. Then I began to paint. This has been the most therapeutic experience of my life! Painting centers me. I started with intuitive painting (taught by Lory Newsom, our former Arts and Wellness Coordinator). With intuitive painting you don’t have a plan—you start by putting paint on the canvas using brushes, pallet knives, sticks and even your fingers. Finger painting was a revelation to me! I hadn’t done this since I was a kid and I loved it! This is how painting ended up being part of what we teach here in the clinic. Painting helped me to deal with my anxiety and continues to be something I turn to in times of stress. Fast forward and I take classes online often and have a full studio in our basement. And now we are finishing up a studio for me in the backyard so that I can have natural light when I paint!

Meditation

The final piece in my self-care pathway is meditation. I began meditating over 2 years ago. I use an app and meditate every morning after I first get up—I don’t even leave my bed! I began with 5 minute increments and over the year have slowly moved up to 15. This is by far the most helpful self-care activity that I do and the only one I do every day. I wish I made time to walk daily because I know that exercise would also help but I can only start (and stick to) one thing at a time. Meditation has had a significant impact on me—the most helpful is that I am able to stop and think before I react to something in a way that might be offensive to the person speaking to me. This is most evident in my work life and is something that I am working on in my personal life. Every day I continue to work towards being calmer and more centered throughout my day. This is a work in progress. But then again, so is my life.