The Illness-Induced Anxiety Cycle: A Personal Tale

Why is it that I can keep up my emotional armor when my body is well, but when I am sick, every worry breaks out of its cage and runs wild in my mind?

I am just getting over a stomach bug.

Up all night and laying on the bathroom floor, this flood of darkness and fear came over me.

My life sucks. I will never accomplish even the small goals I have set for myself. There is no point to anything. My kids are out in a dangerous world. The worst could be happening right now.

My anxiety mind went off the rails, and my body was aching with sickness. 

It's so weird because this year has been the happiest I have felt since my kids were little.  I have been purposefully grateful for this happiness; I have acknowledged it daily, petted it, fed it, and felt it.  It was shocking to all of a sudden feel this crash of emotion. 

It was still there in the morning and it is still there one day later.

I've written about the empty nest and the thrill of having time to myself and trying to renew my relationship with my husband. Today, I hate the empty nest; I am weeping in the silence. 

I created every possible scary scenario in my head that could happen to my kids and I am wracked with fear, overwhelmed with my job, my marriage, my responsibilities, and the grind of daily life. 

I spend hours on the couch under a blanket, and though the worst of the physical illness has passed, my mind is drained from worry, tears rolling down my cheeks.

I decide to take a walk in the sunshine in the front yard to try and clear my head. 

Once outside, I cry even harder because, like a fever dream, I realize that the tree in my front yard was one that I planted when we built this house. 

The only living thing that can possibly understand me today is that tree. 

It has been here every single day, like me.  It's watched us all come and go for 20 years and now it sees that it's just two of us here now.

It doesn't judge whether now is better or worse than then. It just is. 

The tree acknowledges me without saying, "It would be worse for the kids if they never left you… circle of life… blah blah blah."

My head aches and my tummy still hurts, but the sun feels nice on my face.

I reach out my hand to hold a low branch and close my eyes.  I stand there, feet in the grass, shaking hands with the tree. 

"I am here, outside this house, watching babies, toddlers, teenagers, dogs, and deliveries pass by me.  I will be here long after you are all gone."

I feel my shoulders go down, my fists unclench.

This is the way of the universe. 

The microcosm of soap opera dramas that play out in my head have no purpose.  Nature is right outside of my window, bursting with green leaves in June, quivering with potential and hope, going with the breeze... not fighting against it.

Tomorrow, I will feel better.   I will be able to sort through my worries, put the irrational, unhelpful ones in a box, and close the lid.  I will be able to find optimism again. 

David R. Hamilton says, "As we change our mind, we change our body at a cellular level."

For me, my body changes my mind.