Nap - attempt one

Oh how I was looking forward to my attempt at napping

I finished off my paperwork and eagerly drew the curtains at 2.15 , popped on the radio 4 afternoon play and set my alarm for 40 minutes later .
Five minutes in - phone rang . Botheration I meant to silence it . Ten minutes later just as I was drifting then mr Kay wandered upstairs and started wittering about going to the catering warehouse to look at carvery lamps and fridges
I was in bed at 2.30pm . why would he pick that time to think I would like to look at fridges and meat heating devices
Tried again - doorbell went and the courier was delivering my next open uni course material

Gave up

Went to look at fridges

Will try again next week sometime

I am not good at blogging every day

Daily blogging is not my forte . Clearly

My mission of more sleep is proving tricky and somewhat unsuccessful as yet . My days just seem to be going quicker and quicker .
Alarm goes off and there is a whole day ahead of me . School run done , coffee in mug and then I start on my open uni . Before I know it then lunchtime is there and by the time I've dealt with business enquirys and quotes then somehow the time monkey has stolen the afternoon and it's 5pm and I'm tired . Tired until I get into bed and then brain perks up and I'm awake until 1am . Growl .

Anyway I have a plan

I am going to try and learn to nap .

Oh yes

A daytime nap would be super

I can unstuck today as I planned to try and give an attempt at a nap a go and got sidetracked and looked up and it was 4.30pm

Can't do it tomorrow as I'm in a meeting all afternoon so Friday will be the day . Nap city here I come - now to google "how to nap" and the second flaw in my plan is that I can't sleep in the daytime but I'm willing to learn

Anxiety and gut instinct are similar beasts

I felt really weird yesterday in the early evening. Little one - who is not so little now at seven and I were sitting on the sofa and she seemed quiet. I asked her a few times if something was wrong and she said no but I kept getting a nagging feeling. After her shower I asked again and again she said no and I just had this icky feeling in my stomach .

Anyone who has panic or anxiety will be familiar with it - that feeling of impending doom over nothing and I got quite cross with myself over asking her so many times and projecting my insane feelings onto her

Ten minutes later she burst into tears and told me she had been "bad" and handed me a letter from her book bag from the school. She and another girl had been mean to a third girl and not letting her play at break time , the school phrase it as " not speaking with care " and she had been called in to see the head teacher and told off .

I popped in this morning and had a chat with the head teacher and got the details and had it confirmed that E had apologised and they were treating it as a one off

So there you go - sometimes the anxious feeling "over nothing " is not without basis

Doesn't that just confuse things!

Mission for September

Sleep . Must get more sleep

Sofa dwelling day

I took my first day off in ages today .
A total day off with the exception of the washing up and that was only gone because I ran out of cutlery so needs must when the devil drive

Our late afternoon drink to catch up with friends after work yesterday ended somehow morphed into us still bring put at 11.30pm and jigging to a Celtic punk fiddle band. We haven't been out in ages so I was glad we went in the end as I nearly bowed out as I was tired after the weekends work

I've spend the day with a hangover but not a nasty one , quite a pleasant lie on the sofa eating junk food and drinking earl grey tea by the bucket load and just feeling tired and a bit zoned out but chilled

No anxiety at all with the hangover though so in a weird way - result

I've now got a very full on two weeks with work so it's head down and less of the Irish jigging

Skinny beef lasagne

I made the hairy bikers skinny beef lasagne tonight which uses blanched leeks instead of pasta

Those naughty hairy bikers told me that the prep time was 30 minutes

They lied

I started at 9pm and finished it at 11pm

And the leeks were nasty

Bad boys

Fake it til you make it

I took some advice from the lovely Kary May today and took some time for myself and also took time to be super nice to Mr Kay and my daughter and you know what , I was smiling through gritted teeth at first but after a little while I felt much brighter. Whould have thunk it

The written off car paperwork is still dragging on but in a rare turn of events then about 10 clients who owed us money since the start of the month all paid at once so we can go and look for a new car next week and let the insurance take its own sweet time so that is definately a result

Grumpy and blahhhhh

Struggled with not thinking the worst today . Confusing emails about whether or not we are entitled to the courtesy car they have already given us . Got a parking ticket within a day of having the hire car - our fault and just general grumpiness from me

On the plus side I got some lovely smelling cocoa butter body cream and get under my diet calories allowance for the first time in probably weeks

Less shouty lady tomorrow I hope 

What a day

I got to practice my positive thinking today big time
Someone drove into OH and wrote off our car.
He is okay , just bruised . Thats good
The other driver admitted liability at least for the moment . That's good
We got a courtesy car the same day . Good
We had a payment clear today do can look for another car instead of having to wait an eternity for insurance to investigate and pay out . Good

I kept thinking worst case scenario type things but caught myself and didn't say them out loud about fifty percent of the time . Hmmm . Well it's progress not perfection for sure




X

Resolutions

I have just spent half an hour whizzing around my happiness toolbox and making some resolutions to start with

One of them is that I am going to try and blog every day through September to get me into the blooging swing of things again - even if its just a tenny weeny little entry. Its with the aim that if I am writing daily then I will become more accountable to myself.

The other resolutions so far are fairly mundane but will reap rewards in the long run. Yanno - drink water , walk twice a week , take time to do something for me each day even if its only 5 minutes , show love to my daughter each day. All the run of the mill shizzle that I don't always do

The resolution which I think I am going to find most challenging is two fold . Its to be more positive about situations and to not be the shouty lady
I must admit I am increasingly finding that I am turning into a right grumpy old bag . I've always been a wee bit on the tempestuous side but hand up - I'm just a snappy cowbag a lot of the time and it doesn't feel good. Its mostly frustration from saying the same things time and time again and getting no change in response ( so that would be mainly the other half) and I've sort of given up on getting upset over it and just switched into shit bag mode.

Its not a good way to be so I must endeavor to change that by hook or by crook

The Happiness Project

I read a thought provoking book earlier this year called The Happiness Project by an author called Gretchen Rubin and the premis behind the project appealed to me and I kept meaning to have a go at setting some "happiness resolutions" myself but I'm the Queen of all or nothing and I just never quite got around to it.

To give you an idea of what the book was about then I have copied the Amazon blurb below

"Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany. One rainy afternoon on a city bus, she realized that she wasn't as happy as she could be. In danger of wasting her days - always yearning for something more, waiting for problems to miraculously solve themselves - she realized her life wasn't going to change unless she did something about it. On January 1, she embarked on her Happiness Project, and each month she pursued a different set of resolutions: to get more sleep, quit nagging her husband, sing in the morning to her two young daughters, start a blog, imitate a spiritual master, keep a one-sentence journal. She immersed herself in everything from classical philosophy to contemporary psychology to see what worked for her-and what didn't. Illuminating yet entertaining, profound yet compulsively readable, "The Happiness Project" is one of the most thoughtful and prescriptive works on happiness to have emerged from the recent explosion of interest in the subject. Filled with practical advice, sharp insight, charm, and humour, her story will inspire readers to navigate their own paths to happiness."

There is a Happiness Project Toolbox website http://www.happinessprojecttoolbox.com and I finally got around to joining it today

For now then my only resolution is to blog more or less everyday until I get my head around some ideas and plan which direction I would like to take

An Update - end of summer 2012

I had almost forgotten about this blog and stumbled upon it again last week

I have been meaning for the whole week to check in and update and I remember when I was in the depths of the anxiety and panic whirlwind and feeling very very frustrated when I found blogs echoing my feelings at the time and then realising the owner had stopped updating and I never knew the "ending" to the story

I understand now that there probably was no ending to the story and people on the whole most likely just slowly but surely found ways to adapt to their situation which made it less scary and therefore lessened the "fear" surrounding the panic and anxiety and learned to live with the little jitters that still remain

That has been my experience anyway

I have just read my last post in march and things are much the same and thats fine with me.

I still get days where I feel anxious and jittery but my reaction to it is more frustration than fear and once the fear is gone then its manageable and I just get on with it

The anxiety doesn't stop me doing anything now and if a situation makes me feel anxious ( or indeed if I feel anxious and hyperventilatey for no reason) then I just steel myself to carry on and know that it will pass and it isn't half as bad as when I used to make myself rest up

Being tired won't kill me , feeling worried wont kill me , a panic attack or anxiety attack wont kill me
They probably wont make me pass out either which was my weird worry ( and still is sometimes) but the thing is that even if I did pass out ( and I never have) then that wouldn't be the end of the world would it ?


Something is going to kill me someday but who knows when and who knows what and hopefully I have many years ahead of me.

Regardless then however many years I have ( and please let them be many lol) then I want to be sure I've made the most of my life and filled it full of love and joy and experiences that enriched me and that when I do conk out that I'm happy with the life I have lived rather than regretting the life I didn't live through limiting myself


My plan is to start using this blog again reguarly as a "happiness project" blog. I will explain more in another post. I toyed with starting another blog but when I thought about it then this blog is the perfect place to begin a new chapter

It doesn't have to last forever

I haven't been updating because there hasn't been much to update about. Thats a good thing when the blog is about anxiety :-)

I've been just fine . I'm losing weight , I'm eating well , I'm still walking each day ( well most days) and I'm still taking my vitamins and I think the shock of the panic and anxiety has left me so it isn't kicking off the symptoms all the time now -

I get the odd random "hideously nervous for no reason "moment , now and then a " I can't breathe properly " moment and occassionally a " my thoughts are spinning - what if I'm going crazy" session but they don't bother me like they used to so the feeling doesn't spiral into a panic attack or anxiety attack.Well not a full on  , all singing , all dancing one anyway

In short things are much improved

An example : I was driving to meet Mr Kay last week and I was suddenly overcome with a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach out of nowhere. Now Mr Kay is nice and given I've lived with him for 7 years then we can safely assume I wasn't nervous about meeting him. This gave way to some random thoughts about having to pull the car over incase I had a panic attack but I just pressed on , stopped and did the shopping I needed to do and carried on to meet him and it was all over in a few minutes

I'm no closer to figuring out what kicks off these mad moments but I'm learning if I just take a " pah ignore it til it does away " attitude then the moments don't snowball like before when they happened every bloody hour or so

I had another moment last week where I was in the supermarket with MK and little girl and I felt all disorientated and panicky and I just carried on ( albeit while snapping at them to hurry the feck up ) and felt okay again within half an hour. I'm sure those big bright neon supermarket lights send me funny . However the point is that even if they trigger off a panicy memory and therefore panicky feelings then the solution is not to avoid the supermarket but to go more often

Thats not very interesting is it !!! I felt compelled to write something today though so there it is

So far so good for 2012

What a change in a short time
I'm still bobbing along nicely

I've had the odd "eeeek moment " but on the whole things are calm and good now I've accepted its not a big deal

Once such eeeeeek moment was a couple of days ago when I decide to get some exercise and walk up to the shop about half a mile away. I should add I did this trip four days running with no eeeeeek factor but on the fourth day I set off and after a couple of minutes felt "odd". I think I was walking faster than usual so my heart beat faster than normal and I *think* that set off panic feelings. I was strolling along and became aware my heart was beating fast and that made me start thinking about my breathing  which of course then made me hyperventilate a bit and I then couldn't think of anything apart from the fact I couldn't catch a deep breath

I didn't need a deep breathe because I was breathing too fast ( hyperventilating ) but the fact I felt like I couldn't get a big breath made me panic and I had a little panic attack but still kept walking along and concentrated on breathing out for longer than in and it faded by the time I was on my way home
Eeeek but was okay in the end so no point in worrying about it

Funny what can trigger the memory of panic though and therefore set the brain into panic mode

Rhodiola Rosea , Diets and Sober January

I mentioned before I believe that I started taking some Arctic Root capsules ( a brand of rhodiola basically) in December and the anxiety plummented to minimal a couple of days afterwards. I'm still not sure if this is just a coincidence and I was just naturally not getting the panic or if it upped my serotonin or something .

I'm hoping it was a coincidence really ( just because I don't want my non anxious state to be the result of a tablet if you know what I mean )but ran out of Arctic Root yesterday and couldn't find anymore for love nor money so I've switched to plain old Rhodiola so it will be interesting to see if theres any difference

I mooted with having a whirl without them but there must be some part of me which is thinking this new found calm is not all natural as I decided I didn't want to stop taking them ... just incase its them and I end up all jittery and panicky again. I'll give it a couple of months then reassess

Diet still okay on the whole but I am having food envy as a sit and watch Mr Kay munching on all the left over xmas goodies. Stilton , maderia infused pate , crackers and honey roasted nuts were yesterdays torture for me. Pass the bananas lol

Sober January is no more. I cracked and had a couple yesterday. Thats a bit rubbish really but then again I don't really have the calories spare for alcohol for the next three months ish while I'm dieting away so maybe a little alcohol wasn't the end of the world

I expected to feel very remorseful I didn't achieve my Sober January goal but I didn't really so there you go. It did prove that alcohol reduces your will power though as I munched my way through a bag of crisps needlessly afterward so its not just the alcohol calories - its also the munchy calories afterwards so its on the not often list

The powers that be must have listened to me whinging about being bored as I've been rushed off my feet with work quotes this last week. Not quite what I had in mind to relieve the January boredom but hey ho

New Ki Fit 100 day weight loss challenge blog

I'm at an impasse with this blog as I started it after the year from hell with anxiety to note my progress and the anxiety is barely there for the last four weeks

I'll still be blogging here but I'll also be doing my weight loss 100 day challenge over here incase anyone fancies chivying me on

http://mskaysgettingkifit.blogspot.com/

Ki Fit

Mr Kay is away working again until the weekend so I have been keeping myself amused by throwing myself into my diet and fitness plan with gusto.

Dieting is dull and it takes so flipping long to lose weight that took a couple of weeks to gain .

However needs must when the trouser shrinking fairies strike so I've been exercise biking , zumba-ing ( in the privacy of my living room ) and walking and generally finding excuses to do any activity that gets the calories moving.I spent half an hour rearranging the shed today .. in January..in the UK .. its sending me crackers

My xmas present was a ki fit which is the UK equivalent of the bodybugg. The bodybugg is the black armband they all wear in the Biggest Loser TV show. It uses your body temperature and heart rate readings to figure out how many calories you are burning a day ( or it does it some how anyway - the science escapes me ). You then just eat 500 calories less than you are burning to lose a pound a week or make the deficit bigger to lose more

I'm suprised to learn I burn about 1800 calories a day just farting about doing nothing much and can get that up to 2200 calories with a bit of zing in my step ( okay a lot of zing)

Mr Kay thinks I'm insane as he is not over weight in the slightest and can't work out why I can't just eat less and move more without a £100 piece of kit on my arm.

I think most people would think that actually but I have high hopes

I'm an all or nothing girl and if I have a day when I'm munchy then I just throw the baby out with the bath water and just eat everything in sight.  I'm hoping the knowledge that if I want a day off then I can just eat what I burn and wont put on weight will help me do that .

I can hear you all sniggering at the back - stop it

Anyway I've been messing about with that while not drinking as its Sober January so life is dull but I feel virtuous