Anxiety and Stress is a constant work in progress for me. That is my “status update”!

I was enjoying brunch with some friends this morning.  One of my friends raised a great question about Facebook, “is it a true reality of people’s lives??”  For example people never post as a status update, “I want to divorce my husband”, “I can’t stand my mother”, “I’m struggling with depression”, “My child is driving me crazy and I wish I never had him”, “I’m broke and can’t afford my house payment”, “I feel lonely and I don’t have anyone to help me”, “I’m 20K in credit card debt”, so I was driving home…and it hit me!!! No, Facebook is not a “TRUE” reality of people’s lives.  For the most part we only see the outside, but you never really see what’s truly going on.  What’s wrong with being REAL and letting people know the truth every now and then.  We are all humans, we all make mistakes, we all need encouragement and for the most part we all just need to know that we are loved and that life can and will get better!!!

Recently, I had an anxiety set back.  I had a small anxiety attack.  I was ashamed, embarrassed and afraid.  Here I was writing a blog, and letting everyone know “how to prevent stress” and I started down the same path.  I thought “why is this happening to me all over again”! Then I realized…it’s me!! My old ways were starting to creep back in, the temptation of success started to slowly work itself back into my life.  I needed to get control.  "All man's efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied." (Ecc. 6:7). This verse means we ALWAYS want more. We work ourselves like dogs…for what? We only as humans crave more! Unless you have something to put your faith into and for me that is Jesus Christ, you will ALWAYS want more.  I had to re-group, re-focus- and re-prioritize, again. 

We all have baggage that we would like to unload, unpack, dismiss, and get rid of.  It’s just what type of baggage we put in our backpack.  Regardless of what type of baggage it might be, the answer is ALWAYS the same.  "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--His good, pleasing and perfect will." Romans 12:1-2  

I was tested and tempted recently.  I may have failed, but I know what ever was meant to harm, God can turn to good!  Your path may not always be easy; in fact it might be downright impossible. So, take a moment to think about this next statement. Who we are under pressure reveals who we really are.  Who are you???  

Anxiety and Stress is a constant work in progress for me.  That is my “status update”!

Stress is an epidemic in this society!

How do you prevent the silent killer? Stress is an epidemic in this society.  In prior blog posts I outlined exactly how my nervous breakdown happened if you have not read those entries I encourage you do so.  I want to share now what I’m doing to prevent stress from creeping back into my life.  First and foremost I sought God.  Second, I educated myself on the signs and symptoms and cure.  I took control back over my life.  I was not going to let stress control me.  The first book I read to help outline the changes I need in my life was “Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life”. It gave me a great perspective on what I needed to relinquish control on and give up.  For me it was control of every situation and always striving for more in every aspect in my life that got me into my mess.  Not trusting others to help, which meant I had to take on more.  I went through every aspect of my life and cut out everything that was NOT necessary. I defined my role as a sales manager, photographer, wife, mother, friend, sister, daughter and most importantly a Christian and cut out EVERYTHING that was outside of my duties as those listed.  I encourage you to do that…define your roles in life and stay within it. I’m happy to report that setting boundaries and staying within my defined roles has worked out perfectly!!! Other stress reducers for me became putting exercise as a priority, cutting out caffeine, and spiritual meditation. I also saw a qualified Christian counselor for 5 weeks. 

I do hope for a day that I can be off my medication and with God on my side I’m confident that day will come.  My goal of this blog is to raise awareness of the severity of stress and the stronghold it can have on your life if you let it. We all have weakness, struggles, issues and trials in fact it’s the only way Satin can do his work on this earth.  When you realize that…it makes you understand why bad things happen to good people. 

Bad circumstances may be used by God to display His power and grace.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. ⁹ But he said to me “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me
2 Corinthians 12:8–10

I’m boasting about my weaknesses so you can see God's amazing Glory!!!

Prevent Stress-We all can do a better job at it.

Sleepless nights, racing thoughts, trouble concentrating, headaches or worse, migraines and the need for caffeine to “pick me up”?  For me that is where it began. Those were my warning signs that I ignored for several years.  Knowing what I know now…I believe I could have saved myself from the total nervous breakdown that I experienced. However, as odd as it sounds I’m thankful for it, because God has given me a platform to share my triumph over anxiety through his grace via the web. As it stands today over 1,000 people have viewed this blog, my prayers have been answered, the word is being spread and it’s all through him!!! I am truly humbled and honored that so many of you have shared your stories, and support through this blog! There truly is not much out there about anxiety and stress.  It’s almost as if stress is just accepted and a normal part of life.  If you’re not stressed then you must not be important…Right?  We have “become humans that run at supersonic jet speed, but we were built for camel speed” as Dr. A Hart puts it. Here’s the deal…stress is going to happen, even in the bible we hear Job call out from stress “The churning inside me never stops; days of suffering confront me." (Job 30:27). So I’m not being impractical by claiming that I’m completely saved from anxiety and stress.  However, I am choosing to deal with it differently now. Life is about choices…you can choose to believe in GOD or choose not to.  You can choose to believe you can get through your anxiety or believe you’re doomed for life.  Isn’t it funny that some of the best modern day quotes can be found deeply rooted in the bible, for example everyone has heard “you are what you think you are” the bible says in proverbs 23:7 “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” Or I know you have heard this one “don’t go to bed angry” Ephesians 4:25-26 says “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger.” I was floored when I found out the bible said “NOT TO GO TO BED ANGRY.” Gives you a whole new look on how current the bible really can be in our lives today.  So it’s about choices…when I began to really search for answers and truth about my anxiety…many answers were found in the word of God. Tonight I give you a challenge, choose to deal with your struggles differently. Change your thoughts, believe in your hearts you can change and heal. Here is another quote everyone has heard “knowledge is power” well again that is found in the bible “A wise man has great power, and a man of knowledge increases strength” proverbs 24:5.  Educate yourself, learn about stress and do your best to prevent it.

Do you know the warning signs of stress and anxiety? Part Six

Even though I was not exactly cured from anxiety, I felt empowered. I gave the anxiety over to the Lord and sought wisdom and because of that I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel. For those that have experienced this at any degree you know how scary and debilitating it can be…but please hang on!!! If Jesus can heal the blind, make a cripple walk, and feed 5,000 out of one meal then he can certainly heal your anxiety.  Please do not take that the wrong way, you may still need the help of a knowledgeable doctor, counselor, tremendous lifestyle changes and medication (I DID) and you must know that is OK! The book “The Anxiety Cure” helped me enormously.  It gives a very clinical and spiritual take on anxiety and it JUST MADE SENSE for me.  

How I understand Anxiety

Dr. A Hart in “The Anxiety Cure” has a great way to explain what happens in your brain when anxiety occurs.  You have happy and sad messengers.  The happy messengers are responsible for serotonin and the sad messengers are responsible for a chemical much like adrenalin.  It’s a balancing act…if you have too much of one or the other you have problems.  In my case I had depleted too many of my happy messengers which made my sad messengers go into over drive, which caused the intense anxiety/panic attacks.  Because I had done extensive damage already to my happy messengers by years of stress I absolutely needed the medicine to restore the chemistry back in my brain and still do.  The warning signs were there for years.  That’s why this blog is so important to me…it’s about spreading the word!! It’s about slowing down, it’s about taking care of yourself so that you can be the best employee, mom, dad, wife, husband, sister, brother, Christian you can be. Somewhere in the middle of all this we have become a society that cared more about how hard we work and how many hours we put in per day. Your worth should not be determined from the amount of hours you put in each day…it should be determined by the quality and performance you show in your allocated 8 hour work day.  Whatever happened to the “EIGHT” hour work day? Now the days are 10-12 hour work days and we take work home on the weekends. Some of that pressure is induced from managers/bosses and some just simply induced by ourselves.  In my case it was absolutely me.  My type A personality traits took over and very bad habits started to take form.  I was “on” all the time and never unplugged from work. If that was not bad enough I started several side businesses as well. When is enough, enough?  When do we become happy with our success?  Once we reach a certain annual income, once we start a business, once we reach a certain square footage of a home we own, once we drive our dream car, when is it enough? My point is we always want more. For me it was success within my career, I always had to take on more which somehow meant I was a superhero, which was so far from the truth. This often meant I did not have time to exercise, was not truly present for my family and never had time for a haircut.  I was never busy enough. I always had to do more. 

 Every one experiences stress and anxiety differently, however it may manifest for you it’s important that you understand the signs. Do you know the warning signs of stress??? Quite simply put these warning signs are the smoke alarm before the fire.  Don’t let your smoke alarm go off…

“Be still and know that I am God” Psalms 46:10

Have you ever thought “why me”-Part Five

Have you ever thought “Why is this happening to me?” (“Why can’t I have kids?”, “Why is my mom dying of cancer?”, “Why is my husband so abusive to me?”, “Why is my boss such a jerk?”, “Why can’t I pay my bills?”).  The list could go on and on.  I thought that several times when I was having back-to-back panic attacks…we all have those moments in our life where we say “why me!” We have several ways to deal with those moments. Use my story as an example.  I could have chosen to fight this pain, anxiety, fear, and heartache on my own…and did for several days…and it got me NO WHERE, but once I turned it over to the big man upstairs my story started to turn. How do you “turn it over to God”, I will tell you. Change your thoughts and believe in your heart…that GOD is on your side fighting. Believe your prayers…pray with confidence. Refuse to accept bad news.  Find the Glory in EVERY situation, his Glory! “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” Mark 11:24. All you have to do is believe!!! I think that’s a Whitney Houston song…LOL.  God uses trials in our life to help us grow with him, if we choose to let him.  We all have a choice…what do you choose to do with your next trial???

My trial was Anxiety…and I chose to educate myself and not give into the pain.  More on what I learned to come…

The call that changed my life-Part four of my anxiety story

I woke up on Saturday February 26^th not knowing that I would make a call that would change my life! I heard my 14 month old son crying around 7am, thankfully my mother was still staying with us to care for the boys because the sound of him crying sent my anxiety to a 6 on the scale.  I literally could not focus on anything but myself throughout all of this.  It was the one time in my life I HAD to be selfish. I did what seemed to be my normal routine of pacing my bedroom back and forth for several hours while praying on and off. Around 10:30am I checked my facebook account and saw that I had received a message back from Kristina Baum (the person GOD told me to call), her message said to call her! I picked up the phone and called her immediately.  Remember I had not spoken to her in over 7 years!!! I knew Kristina from college we were Delta Gamma Sisters!!  We only went to school together for a little over a year. I knew she was a strong Christian and a beautiful person, but that’s about all I knew about her since college. She answered the phone and proceeds to tell me that she had been through this exact thing…major panic and anxiety attacks.  Our stories mirrored each other uncannily. She was such an inspiration to me of someone who conquered anxiety and had “been there and done that”. Her WISDOM just spilled out over me…I even took notes!!! The wisdom Troy and I had prayed for was here!!! She told me to read a book called “The Anxiety Cure” by Dr. A Hart, to seek a good Christian counselor, to surround myself with people that understand me right now, to keep praying, and lastly she prayed over me. It was a very powerful conversation that meant and still means so much to me. It felt as though we were the best of friends and had known each other for life.  True Christianity is so pure and loving that if feels like family! God is our father, we are all brothers and sisters and we are to love each other that way.  I always knew that, but never really understood it!! Kristina you were my answered prayer that day, my miracle and I’m so thankful for you!

I read the book “The Anxiety Cure” in four hours! It rocked my world! It shed so much light on anxiety, medicine, and how I got where I was.  In the following days I began to regain control of my anxiety and my life!  My slate was wiped clean, I began a fresh start.

 ¹³ When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you^[a] alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, ¹⁴ having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.^[b] Colossians 2:13-15 

In the next blog I will explain what I did to that reduced anxiety in my life.  Stay tuned!!!

Three miracles (The anxiety starts to lose its foothold)-Part Three

I woke up on the morning of Thursday February 24^th feeling like I had had just won a small victory! I got some rest, something as simple as sleep was something I was so thankful for! Unfortunately it did not take long and the anxiety set in again.  Around 8:15am I took what the doc prescribed for me; Celexa the antidepressant and BusPar which is a milder tranquilizer.  I had Xanax as well but was to only take it if I felt the anxiety was so bad that I would need to go back to the hospital. These medicines did NOT make sense to me. I did not understand what they were doing in my body to help me and they were making me much more anxious.  I DID NOT want to take them. At this point I started rating my anxiety on a scale, 1 being manageable to 10 being I need to go to the hospital.  The whole day it went up and down from 1-8.  Eating was something I could not do either…over the past few days I had lost 8 pounds.  However this day…I was able to eat some vanilla pudding. As the anxiety increased throughout the day the only thing that helped was prayer! I reached out to several friends throughout the day that stopped whatever they were doing and prayed for me.  Jake was one of those friends.  He prayed a very strong prayer over me after which I was able to take a small nap. At one point in the day I took a home decor cross off my bedroom wall that my long time dear friend Crystal gave to me and held it in my arms.  I was willing to do anything to be closer to GOD.  The night ended with prayer and much anxiety.

The miracles start!

Friday February 25^th

I woke up anxious again…rating about 3.  I took my meds and realized I wanted to know more about these meds.  As I have stated before…don’t Google things you want to know about your health! There is always more BAD info then good.  I read every negative side effect known to man about the meds I had been taking and instantly spiraled into a BAD attack. I sent a prayer up to God again…”Please please please GOD give me wisdom; send me a sign or something so I know this is going to end soon”! I reached out to a woman that I barely knew from my church (Element in Wentzville).  I left a desperate plea on her voicemail stating I need prayer.  She called me back and we talked for almost an hour.  Her non-judging love and prayer was so touching.  She also put in a prayer request for me to the church, but I needed more…again prayer was the ONLY thing that was helping me calm.  I called Amy’s mom Kim, she is a very godly woman and her prayers always feel like they are in direct line with God.  She was very comforting and truly helped me get through this difficult part of the day.  As if that were not enough I reached out to Troy’s preacher Terry from his hometown of Hatton.  No one closer to God then a preacher…right?? He prayed over me as well. 

First Miracle-Terry the preacher from Hatton gave me some spiritual and health advice. He also sent me a link by email of some docs in the area that deal with these types of stress and anxiety related issues. Amazingly two links showed up on his end of the email that Terry had never seen before.  He saw them attached in the email just before he hit the send button.  One was entitled “meditation” and one was entitled “untitled document” I came to later find out that all the signs were pointing to spending more time with GOD and GOD was trying to tell me that meditation was what I needed to help relieve stress and become closer to him.  What a cool way God spoke to me!! The untitled document still to this day says nothing on it.  But I kept it and every once in a while open it just to see if it says something on it.  J

Second miracle-Later that day I was pacing the bathroom again feeling “simply crazy”. Anxiety hit about a 7 or 8.  Then suddenly I had a voice speak to me.  This is NOT a joke.  Now…I know I just finished a sentence that said I was feeling “simply crazy” but this voice was a REAL VOICE and it said “Call Kristina Baum”.  I thought to myself “who said that” I looked around, no one was there! I had a conversation out loud back and I said “I’m not calling her…I have not talked to her in over 7 years”.  Then I thought to myself “besides what would I say…she will think I’m crazy, I can’t do that”.  Then I felt this strong feeling not a voice this time “call Kristina Baum”.  WOW!!! What was this…I was not sure…but I knew I needed to listen.  So I said “ok fine…I will Facebook her!!!” I don’t even remember what I wrote…but I basically just told her a brief description of what I had been through.  You won’t believe what happened on Saturday!!! God is so cool!

Third Miracle-My husband came home around 5:30pm and I fell into his arms again.  I told him my fears about taking the medicine.  We agreed that I needed to call my doc and ask some questions, so I did.  I felt bad because it was after hours and I could have called him during normal business hours but of course I didn’t.  A few hours passed and I was beginning to feel upset that the doc did not call me back…however it truly was NOT an emergency so why should he? Troy and I prayed again about the meds and as we were praying the doc called!!!! He graciously, afterhours gave me a way better understanding of the meds and reassured me that I needed the meds and that I would be feeling much better soon!

That night I was able to eat a “you pick two” from bread company for dinner and fell asleep around 11pm.  Before I feel asleep I started to realize that I needed people! I was one that everyone leaned on, but now the roles were tremendously reversed. God puts people in your life for a reason…we were NOT meant to go at this world alone. This explains it well “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.” Luke 10:1

The second miracle continues on Saturday morning….