Nesting. That compulsive urge to sort and organize and streamline before baby arrives. It’s a mother effer when you’re pregnant, even without anxiety. However, when you’re a person living with anxiety, it becomes less of a funny quirk and much more of a darker companion.
I could be having a normal day of tending to household chores, preparing food, playing with my son, and then, all of the sudden, a switch turns off. The space around me becomes dark with only a flashlight focusing on the negative things, and I immediately feel inadequate.
Within seconds, it’s like I finally notice what has been going on around me this whole time. No matter what room I walked into, chaos follows me. Piles and piles of stuff. Just things that had innocently collected in corners and on top of surfaces over time, like most busy households experience. They weren’t really bothering anyone…until now.
I try to start sorting through one, even if the timing is totally inappropriate. Action is usually my remedy to resolving anxiety episodes, but in this case, it quickly becomes my enemy. I could feel my stomach tightening from the stress-induced Braxton-Hicks contractions. Bending over repeatedly is killing my lower back thanks to the extra weight in the front of my body. I begin to sweat and all I am doing is picking up clothes.
After a few minutes of frantically trying to strategize an approach to these millions of tiny messes, I do what I always do when I’m frazzled and my husband is home. I called him into the room to scold him about why things were in piles that had been there for months.
This is when the crazy gets really interesting. In my mind, it makes sense to try and split the blame but really, it only makes things worse because he’s totally blindsided by my erratic behavior. Now instead of one frustrated person, I’ve created two. Thinking the frustration would be divided if I brought in another person, I actually doubled it instead.
The scenario plays out one of two ways: with him hastily completing a requested action to get the hell out of my warpath or with him taking whatever verbal lashing I had to dish out, getting silently frustrated, and walking out of the room, not saying a word. He’s a pretty smart guy and knows when not to exacerbate an already tense situation. No matter what, this scenario usually ends the same: with me alone and crying.
This isn’t my husband’s fault though. This is the cycle. This is about me and my head. My shit-starting, mountain-making, anxiety-riddled head in this pregnancy-hormone, turbo-charged, super-sized body.
When I get overwhelmed and succumb to my anxiety, things can spiral into depression pretty quickly thereafter. I can go from sorting through paperwork and accidentally cutting my hand to ugly crying over the bathroom sink about how insanely incapable I am of accomplishing anything worthwhile in this life if I can’t even organize files without somehow hurting myself. Instantly, I’m a shitty mother. I’m a shitty wife. How can I raise two children if I can’t even take care of myself?
I know this is an isolated example, but it’s a real one. It’s the truth about how debilitating mental illness can be to a seemingly normal person. Add the irrational nature of pregnancy hormones and mood swings into the mix and you’ve created the Sharknado of illogical thought processes.
This is real. It’s not a hyperbole. I mean, yes. Ultimately, it is because there’s no reason I should dictate my abilities to be a successful human being by a minor injury during household tasks. But for all intents and purposes, it’s not an exaggeration of the struggle that people with anxiety and depression face on a daily basis.
When your mind is sprinting through a marathon, you’re left feeling physically exhausted afterwards. People who suffer from anxiety and depression know this feeling all too well. It’s as if your muscles and adrenal glands have done a workout that left you with absolutely no physical benefit whatsoever.
Being mindful of triggers and having a strong, empathetic but not enabling support system can really help reduce these episodes. But sometimes, your mind takes on its own course through the rough waters and you have to ride of the storm. When this happens, I find that letting the waves crash over you rather than resisting can actually help you get through it quicker and more safely. I let myself feel how I’m feeling in safe way. If it ever gets to the point where I’m worried about something happening to myself, I reach out. I don’t mess around with thoughts of self-harm, and you shouldn’t either.
This is my second pregnancy and I remember how exhausting resistance and denial became when I was faced with my anxiety episodes last time around. Even more exhausting than just regular first trimester and third trimester pregnancy on its own.
If any of this is sounding familiar to you, just know you’re not alone, and there is always help. I’m a talker and counseling has always been my go-to therapy for managing my anxiety. When I talk to people who don’t try to solve my problems for me, but rather allow me to talk about them openly and walk through the path with me, I feel like I get to my own solutions faster and more effectively.
Anxiety and depression are manipulative assholes that live inside your head. Think of them as your neighbors in a duplex who don’t pay rent and always try to steal the things that you’ve worked hard for and that make you happy. The fact that they only take and never give makes them that much worse to deal with.
We can’t always choose our neighbors, but we can choose how we interact with them. Who knows? Maybe one day, they will move out. But until then, we have to do our best to manage ourselves appropriately and diligently to live a better life in their presence. After all, that’s the best revenge.