Stress and anxiety are cyclical.
A couple of weeks ago, life was miserable. I was living at a baseline stress and anxiety level that was unsustainable. I was often peaking at max stress and anxiety and was having frequent, not panic attacks, exactly, but periods of intense dysregulation.
A combination of factors caused this.
One, my normal workload was my normal workload, which is to say there’s never a day in which all the work things on my list get done. I’m never caught up at work. It’s stressful, but many, if not most, people deal with this on a regular basis. This adds up to about 30 hours a week, most weeks at this time of my life, but at other times it can be in excess of 40 hours a week.
Two, I had to get taxes done. I always file extensions in April because we don’t always get all the forms we need from everyone on a timely basis. Automatic extensions are wonderful, but come the end of September, even if I haven’t received everything, I still have to get all the info together for our tax person. That’s personal tax info for two people, plus business info for FOUR businesses. It’s a lot. And it doesn’t help that I’m generally not caught up with data entry for the businesses. This was an all-day endeavor for almost three solid days. However, since I was so dysregulated, it took a lot longer than that to get the actual work done.
Three, I’m taking a class. It’s an intense class, with two meetings a week and a lot of work in between. It’s supposed to be part-time, and it is, but just barely. This takes about 12-20 hours a week.
Four, I fucked up. Due to my dysregulation and high stress levels over the months I’ve been taking this class, I neglected to make some payments on a loan for my partner. We got a final notice of default with 15 days to cure. I made a payment to bring us up to date at day 14. On day 15, I received an automated notice that they were accelerating the loan. I panicked for real. Floods of adrenaline, heart beating fast and hard, unable to think. It was horrendous. My partner had not seen the demand letter, yet, and I was fearful of what might happen when they did. If it was my loan, I wouldn’t have been so panicked, but it was my partner’s loan.
I laced my fingers together and pressed my forehead against the knuckle on my thumb. After a few seconds, I started to knock my thumb knuckle against my forehead hard enough so that I would feel it. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but it also did hurt. But it helped me to get back inside my body for a bit.
I haven’t done anything like that for many, many years. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I did something like that. It may have been when I was in high school.
Fortunately, I was able to talk with the loan people and they said that we were current and that the demand letter was an automated letter that we could disregard.
I made the choice not to tell my partner about my fuck-up. They have often accused me of not managing things well enough, regardless of the fact that I manage things far better than they did before I became a part of their life.
Soon after that, another crisis occurred. We have a septic system, and the lid of the septic tank broke. This sent me into another panic, because we don’t have enough money to replace the entire septic system.
The system still works, and we have temporarily covered the tank until we can get a new lid. We’re hoping that we will be able to remedy the situation with just a new lid, and not an entire new septic system.
About a week has passed since this last crisis. The taxes got to the tax lady on time. I’m getting work done as best I can. My partner and I had an almost two-hour talk about my CPTSD and our relationship, and while things aren’t perfect, I think they’re starting to understand me a bit better. I finished a project for my class and have a bit of time to wind down before the next part of the class begins.
The septic tank lid is still looming out there in the distance, but everything else is calming down for the moment.
I’m now able to resume making my lists in a little notebook I use to keep track of daily to-dos and daily life tasks. I think I may be able to start swimming again next week, since I am not as agitated as I have been. I also think I may be able to start my favorite hobby again. This hobby helps me relax, but it’s also a challenge, so at times of enormous stress, it’s more stressful to try to participate in the hobby.
I think that at times of enormous stress, I need to figure out a way to continue to participate in my hobby without the challenging parts. Perhaps instead of regular practice, I could just do it for fun. Do the things I already know how to do and try not to push myself to improve. That will be hard, but it is also a good skill to develop.
I’m glad the current series of crises are (mostly) managed. I’m hoping that between now and the next series I can develop some better coping methods.
In the midst of a crisis, it seems like life is always a crisis, but I know that’s not true. Similarly, in times of no crisis, it’s hard to remember that things won’t always be smooth sailing and to prepare oneself for rough seas. Especially when life is already hard because of CPTSD. But now that I’m aware of my CPTSD, I can deliberately prepare myself by finding ways I can self-regulate while things are at a place of relative calm.