Its 2013 already

How time flies dear reader.

After 5 months then I would say that a little update is well overdue

I am doing well on the whole. In the last five months I have

• Stopped being so tired all the time. Not sure why as I don't think my night time sleep has gone up much over 6 hours on average . Perhaps the slow and steady drip feed of daily Rhodiola Root , Multivitamin and B6 supplements has statred working. Perhaps the reduced anxiety has just let me recover because anxiety is exhausting - lets face it

• I lost half a stone .. and regained it. Twice. That one is a work in progress and my next diet starts as usual on Monday

• The BIG ONE on the anxiety results front is .... I stopped smoking three weeks ago. I am using a fancy dan electronic cigarette so I'm still getting nicotine but without the tar and chemicals. Within a day of stopping  then the low level underlying anxiety plummeted to only every now and then levels. I actually didn't see that one coming given I'm still using nicotine

I am not 100% carefree and anxiety free but its all at a level where its manageable and I'm not scared by it anymore

I had a couple of days of moderate anxiety just before my period this month that I assume was just hormonal . Last week I had a mini panic attack while walking up a steep hill and my heart went boom boom which I think kicked off reminders of how panic attacks feel and escalated it. Do you know what .. I was fine and handled it well. I kept walking while panicking and when I got to the top of the hill I sat on a wall for a couple of minutes and just kept tell myself that if I waited and kept calm it would fade and the worst that could happen is a full blown attack and I'd still be fine after 15 minutes. It faded ... of course it did.

 I had quite a trembly shaker of an attack three months ago while driving but apart from that nothing major. That one was a build up of tension as my friend brought her three kids round and they were so badly behaved and constantly noisy that after three hours and driving them home ( to get rid of them to be honest ) I just felt headf*cked and I think I overbreathed without realising. That attack was horrible at the time as my 7 year old was in the car with me. My heart did its boom boom boom thing and I started shaking a little and I had to pull over and pretend I had gotten too hot and had to take my jumper off so as to have some time to gather my thoughts. The stop worked and I made myself carry on and pop into the garage for petrol on the way home. Felt a bit shocked and shaky but as usual carrying on rather than running home and worrying about it was the right thing for me to have done so lessons being learnt all the time

Two incidents in five months isn't bad at all , especially now I have the skills to calm myself down when they happen . Both times I was fully aware it was a panic attack which helps to stop it escalating

I hope everyone out there is doing well and I'll pop back and updated sporadically

xxx

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