Walking saves my mind

Camilla in my garden outside the front door


Rhodhendrum (SP?) flowers on my walk


Flowering Cherry on the same walk this morning

Don't you just hate it when you've been ticking along nicely. Not feeling too bad and occasionally really good, when life conspires against you to put you back in the anxiety zone.

This last week has been a case in point, a week last Friday my youngest did something that troubled him. It took him two days to get round to being able to tell me what was going on with him. At the same time I was taking on some responsibility for my Uncle. Many friends who contacted me last week had big troubles that they needed someone to vent with.

Result, anxiety state for me. I have spent the week waiting for something to happen, nothing has of course,anxiety is anything but logical!

One of the things I am good at controlling is my breathing, so from that point of view I have managed to hold those horrible feelings of increasing panic away for the most part. But I have felt completely worn out, which again given that I am fighting my inner demons not to feel the anxiety, and to allow the emotion out in a healthy way, is not surprising.

It's as well the man walking his dog the other day, who was ill mannered to me, when I asked him to keep his unleashed dog away from mine, couldn't hear me after he passed by. He was a wonderful catalyst for my need to have a good swear and mutter to myself. My anger with him was sustained all the way round my walk and the expletives I used, did me proud!

In fact I think without being able to dog walk I'd be completely mad, as this morning having woken up from a series of anxiety dreams, all of them disturbing I went muttering out loud on my walk. I talked out loud to the main protagonist in my current anxiety, yep youngest son AGAIN! He,of course was not on the walk with me, but that wasn't the point. The point was to release my pent up frustrations, without anyone elses point of view interfering in my need to rant.

The other thing that I've become aware of is in all this exhaustion I cannot cook. Or rather I cannot be bothered to. Which is a rare event as I love cooking. But this week any 'proper' meals have been made by youngest, and left to my own devices I seem to exist on a diet of toast and fresh tomatoes.

Of course being the 'good mother' I had been beating myself up for not doing what I normally do, till I realised that it was simply part of dealing with those inner demons of anxiety.

Now I don't want this to be a diatribe against my youngest son, cause the anxiety is mine. And what I'm aware of that nowadays the length of my piece of string between feeling ok and not, is extremely short.Whether this is age related, or as a result of all of I've gone through, I don't know. And of course when I'm not in an anxiety state, I'm calm and unworried to the point of being positively bovine!

It takes though very little for me to go from feeling absolutely fine to feeling twitched and nervy.In fact when I was visiting my eldest recently it happened, and him being the calm person he is, helped me look at what happened to me to get me there. Now being a therapist and trained nurse I do understand all the physical manifestations going on in the nervous system, then the release of adrenaline and then increased oxygen intake.

It is more difficult to understand the unconscious processes of my mind. But each time a wave gets me, if I can sit on my own shoulder for a moment and think about what is happening, I can uncover another bit of the jigsaw of anxiety. So yesterday working out that the exhaustion of dealing with those inner demons stopped me having the energy to cook was a big step forward. As today I can allow myself to feel fine about it, and so having removed the unquestioned dread by making it a statement I now feel ready to cook. Which is just as well as I have a Sunday lunch to do!

It's a fantastic morning here weather wise,so I'm going to have breakfast in the garden and make a list or two for my holiday later this week. I've got an interesting trip, Devon, Thursday; Poland, Friday; Devon, Monday; Cornwall,Tuesday; Devon,Friday and home Saturday. So not sure if I'll get back here before I go as I've got a lot to cram into the next three days. But no doubt on my return I'll have lots to say as I'm going to Auschwitz next Saturday in amongst all the other things I'm planning on doing.