Anxiety again…

Anxiety again…only this time on the inside. After my experience with the Cable Guy, and my reflection on how anxiety producing that was for me, I became aware of other points of anxiety in my life at the moment.

As my general health improves, I am encouraged…tempted…to do more things, go faster, try harder. And as I go about this, my brain begins to caution me: “don’t raise your blood pressure…slow down…” This kind of inner rumination creates a very internal and personal kind of anxiety. “Is my blood pressure rising? Should I stop doing this? Am I about to stroke again?” I try to figure out if the way I am feeling internally could be a measure of rising or lowering blood pressure, with all that this measure means to me.

The other day I had a headache. Not a “sore head,” as I’ve mentioned previously, but a headache. It wasn’t too bad, but I haven’t had headaches for years. Of course, I began to worry about what it meant. Was my BP up? Was I in danger? Of course, this kind of inner rumination is itself a manifestation of anxiety, so I only make matters worse!

One occurrence that fed into this pattern was that, for two days hand running, my BP was quite high at the mid-day monitoring. This puzzled me…well, really, it shocked me. What could this mean? Should I take the BP before I eat lunch? Should I lie down for a while first?

Reflecting on this whole story as I walked home from Church and Tim’s today, I began to wonder at the self-absorption demonstrated through all this. It’s terribly easy either to become a total denier of symptoms and go one’s merry way, or to become a hypochondriac about it, as I believe I am in danger of doing. I’m sure I talk about it a lot to Beatrix, and I certainly think about it a lot, especially when my head is aching. The experience of having a wonderful deep-tissue massage, and then having my BP going way up afterward, actually scared me quite a bit.

I’m experiencing this ‘monitoring’ behaviour, and the anxiety that I attach to it, as a real annoyance. It’s also a failure to trust…whether that’s God, or simply the human process of healing, I don’t know. Anyway, that’s where I am today.