Yo-yo mood

I want to work out.

I don’t want to work out.

I want to do yard work, or paint my kitchen, or clean my house.

I don’t want to do…anything.

I want to be with people!

I don’t want to be with anyone.

I’m excited for what’s coming!

I don’t give a shit.

I love my job.

I need to find something else to do.

Ever go back and forth between these emotions? Am I the only one?

WTF is going on inside my head that I can’t figure out what the heck it is that I want??

I’m assuming it’s stress or anxiety or perfectionism or fatigue or fear or all of the above. I haven’t quite put my finger on it’s etiology, and much like that drives me bonkers in my professional life, it bothers me in my personal life.

I feel like as a medical professional, I should have all the answers, but I don’t. I don’t know anyone who does, medical professional or not. But I still feel like I SHOULD know. And it’s frustrating.

I have no wise words to share on this, I just needed to put it out there that if you’re feeling this way, you’re not alone. The yo-yo mood is strong with this one. It’s real, it’s honest, and it’s apparently part of being human. Sometimes I wish I’d rather be an actual yo-yo. Then it would make sense to feel this way 🤷‍♀️

Stress is no April Fool’s Joke

As I sit here on the eve of April Fool’s, I think of what a joke life has been playing on me for years…

I used to pride myself in how busy I always was. I literally did it all. I guess not much has changed, really, but now I’m not so proud of it as I am just exhausted.

I keep thinking I’m gaining ground and then something happens that puts me two steps back again. I’m sure you know the feeling. We just tend not to talk about it. It’s that hush-hush thing we don’t mention, right? We shouldn’t talk about how stressed we are. We should be smiling and posting pictures on social of our wonderful life like we’re trying to keep up with the Joneses.

I’ve lost just over 20 lbs of my stress weight, and silly me I thought that as I lost weight, my body would be feeling better. But instead, for over a week I’ve been on the verge of an autoimmune flare. Almost 20 years ago, unbeknownst to me at the time, I started having autoimmune issues with a reactive arthritis that crippled me with pain and I missed a lot of work. I would have random joints flare up and be in incredible pain trying to get out of bed in the morning to get ready for work, only to feel like every bone in my feet was broken and I’d have to call out sick.

This past week I’ve had random joint pains again. Previous episodes like this sent me to the ER and urgent care in 2019 and 2020, but this week I haven’t progressed to the severity of those episodes, thank goodness. I have been so scared that it’ll happen again any moment, though… Chronic illness creates a lot of fear. And a lot of stress. The rest of life’s stress tends to seem unbearable when it all stacks up.

Some days I feel like I could conquer the world – those are the days I complete a bathroom remodel or replace a sump pump. I could reenact the scene from Wonder Woman when she emerges from the bunker on those days. Other days I could curl up under the blankets and stay there for days because it all seems like too much. Can you relate? I’m pretty sure many of you can.

So why can’t we talk about these feelings? Why do we have to pretend they don’t exist? Frankly, I’m exhausted of keeping these feelings to myself. I’m a great listener, and I’m always open whenever anyone else needs to talk, but I never want to reciprocate. I don’t want to put my worry on others. I don’t want to admit I can’t always handle it. I don’t want to seem weak. I don’t want to talk when I’m crying! But…I don’t think of others as weak when I listen to them! I don’t feel like others are burdening me! So why do I feel that way myself? Maybe it’s the societal norm. Maybe it’s my history of being bullied and hidden lack of self confidence. Maybe it’s something completely different or all of the above. My point is life is hard. We all live hard. We shouldn’t be ashamed to talk about it.

So find something to joke about in the next 24 hours. Something to lighten the mood a bit. But realize that we’re all in this tragic comedy together. ❤️

Should have named this blog Autoimmune Mama…

Stress sucks. There’s no other way about it. It just does. And those are very highly medical terms. Stress sucks.

I have worked in healthcare for over 20 years now in some capacity, but autoimmune diseases were not my specialty, so I didn’t know a ton about them. I’m learning, for sure, due to personal experience, and now I’m devoting education to it on purpose. Many autoimmune diseases are triggered by stress. Who knew?

In the last couple years I’ve been piling on the autoimmune diagnoses, and have tried several medications. It’s not fun trying new medications when you’re prone to side effects. While the meds may be doing some good, they cause more problems and can’t be tolerated. One last fall caused blurred vision, and since I have a long history of ophthalmological problems, I decided it was probably not the best idea to continue that particular medication. The two most recent meds caused me to swell up like a balloon and lose more activity tolerance than I had already lost from my disease process itself. So for fear of causing rare heart related side effects, it was time to stop those medications too. Now I’m on nothing, and it makes me a little nervous.

So I lie here wide awake with discomfort that I just read is common with my latest autoimmune diagnosis, Spondyloarthropathy. My neck is on fire, my left hamstring is on fire, my right shoulder is on fire. My boyfriend is snoring. The dogs are snoring. And I lie here awake, intermittently grabbing my phone to research another question that goes through my head, because if I do fall asleep anytime soon I’ll forget my question until another time when i won’t have the time to look it up. I do a lot of PubMed searches at about this time in the morning more often than I’d like to admit.

I wish I could go back and teach younger me to be more keen on stress management and pay attention to her body more. Had I done more to prevent stress and avoid foods that triggered my symptoms, maybe I wouldn’t be in my current mess. My advice to anyone reading this? Listen to your body. If you don’t feel well, search for an answer, and know that it may not come from a traditional source. Be open to treatment, even if it means you have some lifestyle changes to make. I used to call myself a “carbivore” until I realized the carbs were a trigger for me, since I essentially have a celiac type of response. Now I don’t really miss them, but it took me nearly 20 years to realize that they were a problem for me and be willing to make changes.

What changes would you be willing to make if it meant you’d feel better? Ponder that thought. Comment if you wish. While you think, I’m going to start another Calm app story in hopes of getting back to sleep…

What PTSD feels like

Ever wonder what it’s like to have PTSD? No? Great, let me explain…

PTSD: post traumatic stress disorder. Most people think of it as a result of being in combat, but I’m not a veteran. Myopia and asthma aren’t exactly great military candidate material. But did you know you can get PTSD from other traumatic life experiences? Bullying, abusive relationships (both romantic and business), even neglect and abandonment. Trauma doesn’t have to be be physical and bloody to leave scars. In fact, emotional scars are probably worse to deal with. You don’t know they’re there all the time. They certainly aren’t visible to the general public. And they’re “easy” to stomp deep down inside while you try to forget about them. But they have a way of rearing their ugly beads.

Take, for example, a simple delay in getting started at a new job. The hiring process may have been rushed and paperwork is now being gone through with a fine tooth comb, and there may not actually be anything wrong – the powers-that-be are just making sure things are done properly. But in the mind of someone with PTSD, there’s clearly something wrong. Somehow, the new employer must have found a reason why not to hire you, and they’re just trying to find a nice way to tell you. They’ve realized you’re an imposter and you aren’t really cut out for the job. Deep down you know that they probably couldn’t find someone MORE qualified than you, but the “deep down” voice isn’t bold enough to speak right now – that voice has been quashed so many times it doesn’t even know if its voice works anymore.

So you start going over and over in your head everything you may have done or said wrong. Did you email too many times? Did you ask too many questions? That’s definitely it – that last question really made you look dumb. No, it had to be asked. Maybe there was an error in one of the transcripts and it looks like your education wasn’t complete. Maybe someone sabotaged the hire. But who would do that? Who knows, but you’ve pissed a few people off along the way…

I know, you’re surprised I’ve pissed a few people off. I’m so docile…

So I lay here in my bed in the middle of the night wondering about everything rather than sleeping. That’s what PTSD feels like. It’s an anxiety attack waiting to happen. It sitting at that simmering point and just not quite getting to a boil. But you don’t sleep and you second-guess everything. And something will finally happen to make you realize you didn’t need to do all that worrying. But for now, the S part of PTSD holds control: Stress. Yay, fun…

Finding motivation

Do you ever just feel like sitting on the couch with a bottle of wine (yes, I said bottle) and a straw and a comfy blanket and just saying eff it?

Yeah, me either 🤷‍♀️

Adulting is hard. Mom-ing is hard. Parenting is hard. Living is hard some days.

Some days I yearn for the innocence of my youth. Those days were so much simpler. My parents worked and supported our family. My sisters made me sit on the floor while they got to sit on the couch. I chased the dogs around our 40-acre property, over and under tree branches, through mud. I made families out of everything – and I mean EVERYTHING. Rocks, corn cobs, tendons off of deer legs when we processed the harvest at deer hunting time… you name it and I probably made a family with it.

In my adult life I’ve made families and they didn’t stick quite as well as my rock families did. I had enough practice, you’d think I could have gotten that right.

In my adult life I’ve struggled to pay bills, cried over lost friends, patients, family members, relationships. I’ve had highs and lows: insomnia, health issues, stress, success, happiness, high energy, low energy.

I’ve noticed that my own children don’t seem to have that same carefree youth that I had. We are always rushing about, they don’t get as much time to play and be kids, they don’t spend nearly enough time outside.

All my best laid plans to exercise regularly and be motivational to others get derailed by injuries, autoimmune flares, depression/anxiety, mom guilt, and the occasional night where I just want to eat a pint of ice cream, do nothing, and probably drink some wine. It doesn’t mean I get to do those things, but I WANT to.

I want to be motivated to wake up early and exercise like I used to. Exercise helps my mood and prevents a lot of my pain. But sometimes I’m in too much pain to exercise, and I’m just not in the mood. I got up and pushed play this morning. The first time in 2.5 weeks. I could stress about how long it’s been. But I won’t. I have enough stress already. I’ll just pray that I can get up and do it again in the morning. Because motivation doesn’t come BEFORE you start something, it comes after and because of doing things.

I need to stay on vacation

Ever feel like you need a vacation, when you JUST got back from vacation?? Asking for a friend…

I spent a glorious 9 days in the woods of northern Minnesota with my little boys last week. We visited a bunch of MN state parks and had so much fun. We went to bed shortly after the sun did, and woke up shortly after the sun. We ate food either made on a camp stove or on the campfire, and we enjoyed every minute – well, except the mosquitos!!

There was no work email to check, no pager to respond to, no alarms. No stress. As we got closer to home on Sunday, I could literally feel the tension coming back into my neck. I started thinking about all the things I needed to do for the week to get ready for work, thought about how many emails would be waiting for me (150+), and came back to real life.

Happy mama went away. I’m back to rushing around like a chicken with my head cut off, having a hard time getting the boys to sleep and thus having a hard time getting them to wake up, and just overall feeling stressed. I need a vacation again. I need to be back out with nature. I need less stress. I need to find a job that I can work from a tent…who’s with me?

You have not failed anyone

I grew up in the church, always active in the church – as a small child I was a “clown for Christ” (yes, a CLOWN! Yikes!), then I was a part of our bell choir, regular choir, New Life teen band; I once referred to myself as a “dork for Jesus”. In my early 20s, you could still find me in our church choir, but in a much larger church and much larger choir. Then in 2007 we moved to Iowa, and I haven’t called a church “home” ever since…

Whether you’re a church-going person or not, you have SOMETHING that you do religiously. Maybe fishing or hiking is your church, maybe serving others is your church, maybe you don’t do anything at all or you don’t believe in God. Whatever the case, I ask you to continue reading. Because there’s a point to this message.

I know when we moved away from Minnesota, I was comparing every church to my Minneapolis church, and nothing compared. Not even close. So I struggled to find a church home because of comparison. It’s probably no surprise that I struggled in my marriage because of comparison, too. We seemed like we were doing ok. I would see the struggles in other relationships and think ours weren’t as bad, or so I thought. I didn’t really know what a good healthy relationship these days should look like.

When we moved back to the Minneapolis area, we used the excuse that our old church was too far away and we wanted the kids to be able to be in church school with their regular school friends. But we still didn’t find a local church home. Nothing met the standards we had set from our Minneapolis church. So we continued not to go to church, and I continued to have a growing void in my life. In my marriage, in my relationship with God, in my relationship with myself.

In the words of one of our marriage, and then uncoupling, counselors, I had grown disgusted with our marriage. It was not what I had imagined, and I fought by myself for a long time to try to keep it alive. To no avail. Because a marriage isn’t sustained by one person alone.

I had started working on personal development because of the lack I was feeling in my life, and as I read books and listened to podcasts, I learned a lot of things about myself. I tried to improve these things, but I couldn’t do it by myself. In the process of divorce, I stopped going to our uncoupling counseling, because it was just making me more angry, and started going to my own therapist. In a previous blog post, I identified that we traced the start of my personal issues back to when I was 13. When I had adults in my life that I looked up to and respected, not believe what I was saying and instead support the people who were bullying me. For 26 years, I’ve been waiting for an adult I admire and look up to, to tell me that I hadn’t failed them and I was worthy of love and respect.

As we went through the tedious and angering steps of the divorce, I avoided the church. I became ANGRY with God. How could He have led me astray with my marriage and let me keep my blinders on for so long? How could He keep putting health issues on me and adding more stress to my life? God only gives you what you can handle? I call B.S. I’ve gotten WAY more than I could handle in the last few years. And then some.

After meeting with friends recently, and having started to feel the need/desire to go to church again, I finally sent a message to my old minister, the one that had married me and my ex-husband, requesting a time to sit down with him. He had time that week. I was shaking as I drove to see him. I got in his office and almost immediately started crying as I poured out a synopsis of what happened to my marriage. And I admitted that I had let my pride get in the way of coming back. I didn’t want to admit that my marriage wasn’t successful. I felt like I had failed him and God because I hadn’t stayed married. He told me the words I needed to hear – I hadn’t failed him or God, and mistakes are human. And anger is a natural feeling and was expected given all I’ve been through. And that God hadn’t left me alone all this time, but He had suffered through all of it with me. And He still loved me. He told me I’m still a good person with a lot of inner strength. He invited me back into the church, and encouraged me to get back into the choir.

I’ve needed to hear those words for 26 years. I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. I’ve felt a peace that I can’t even recall when I’ve felt last.

Have my friends and family and my boyfriend told me I’m loved in this process and that I’m a good person? Of course they have. So why didn’t that do the trick? Because it was adults with authority, adults I looked up to and trusted to help me grow up into a responsible adult, that had let me down when I was 13. I needed someone with that same authority figure to fix it. I’m so thankful for my minister. I’m thankful for the words that he said, the meaning and love behind them, and the sincerity with which he welcomed me back. None of it is a magic wand that will make everything amazing overnight, but it certainly makes the road ahead that much more bearable.

What is it that you need to be able to truly feel that you are worthy, and to start believing the positive words that others tell you? Because you haven’t failed anyone. The only person you have to explain anything to is yourself, and you’re already forgiven.

On being present

I used to be a tech-aholic. I had a smart watch for monitoring my workouts, I turned on my phone running app to monitor my runs also (yes I’d monitor on my watch AND my phone, because they weren’t always the same), AND I’d strap on my heart rate monitor to keep track of my zones. And if I forgot to push the start button on my watch or phone? Let’s not even go there…

So now you get an idea why my boyfriend had to stop and pretend he was marking a day on his calendar as we walked at the zoo the other day. I had started walking the path, intermittently holding the hands of my boyfriend and/or my children as we went, and I didn’t look at my phone or push a button to mark the starting and stopping. WHAT?! You’ve GOT to be kidding me…

I NEVER would have done this in the past. I had to mark these trips on SOMETHING to get credit for it. If my watch ran out of battery in the middle of the day, I’d get VERY cranky because it wouldn’t track my every move! I mean, why even walk anywhere if you can’t track it?!

But in the midst of my autoimmune troubles lately, I’m really working on decreasing my stress and just being. Being present, loving, breathing, laughing with my children, not even getting pictures of EVERYTHING they do to chronicle our lives. I realized after tucking the kids into bed tonight that I haven’t taken pictures of them in two days. I’ve just been with them. We cuddled on the couch, we read books, we giggled. It’s been wonderful.

I’m still working HARD to have this become the norm. My stress level has got to decrease BIG TIME! It’s the only thing I can really control right now. I can’t control much in my life, none of us can, but I CAN control how I respond to things. And I want to enjoy the days I have with my kids. I think it’s safe to say we’ve enjoyed the last few days, even though I have very few pictures to prove it. You’ll have to take my word for it. Or theirs. 🙂

Shoulding all over myself

I should be stronger. I should be smarter. I should be skinnier. I should run more. I should exercise more. I should spend more time with my kids. I should work harder. I should, I should, I should… Shoulding all over myself.

I heard this phrase in a podcast today and it struck a chord with me. I hold myself to such high standards that I have a hard time reaching them. I’m not perfect. Nor should I be. But I still hold myself up there. And when I don’t meet my standards, I feel like a failure. Why? Largely in part due to the trauma of my youth, partly due to society’s high standards.

There are expectations that everyone holds. The worst are the ones we set for ourselves. We are our own worst critics. I had friends point this out to me recently. They reminded me of all the good things about me, all of my good traits. And I have a hard time hearing those good things. It’s easier to hear that you’re NOT good enough, that you’ve made a mistake. But when you hear all the good, sometimes it’s embarrassing.

We’ve got to stop shoulding all over ourselves. We’ve got to start being ok with who and what we are. It’s starts with me. Will you start with you?

Tired of being tired

Some days are better, some days worse, but in general I’m so tired of waking up and feeling like I need another week of sleep.

This chronic fatigue business is for the birds. If I didn’t have insomnia to go along with it, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. But waking up today feeling like I was swallowing broken glass, being a snot factory (so I know I’m getting sick yet again), having a hard time holding my hair brush to brush my hair, and feeling completely wiped out, I’m feeling a little defeated. So what better thing to do than journal this with a poem, right?

I’m tired of being tired….

I’m tired of being tired.

I’m sick of being sick.

I just want to be normal again.

I wake up in pain.

I go to bed in pain.

Same shit, different day.

I was a runner.

I lifted weights.

People considered me strong.

Now it hurts to curl my hair.

Now it hurts to lift a gallon of milk.

I don’t consider me strong.

I’ve always been motivational.

I’ve always helped support others.

I never asked anyone to support me.

Now I’m tired of being tired.

I’m sick of being sick.

And I fear I’ll never be normal again.

Hope y’all are having a better Friday than me.