Category: Lexical Abandon

Exercise: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 2

This post is all about the second (and probably just as important as the first – sleep) of the 50 anxiety management strategies I wrote about in my last post: EXERCISE.

The Background

Long before I even knew I had a thing called generalized anxiety disorder, I used exercise as self-care and a coping mechanism for my anxiety. I wrote a blog for a couple of years when I was in high school, and it’s definitely relevant for me to pull a few quotes from there for the purposes of this argument.

“I went for a run this afternoon in the freezing cold rain. It was awesome. I went partly because I was royally pissed, and partly because I haven’t been for a run since friday, provincials. I was really mad because of my afternoon at school… I needed to pound it all out with a good run.:) Felt amazing.”

“That was wicked. Just got back from my run, it was pouring. I feel sooo good. It was a long day at school and after that I am so refreshed.”

Even though I didn’t realize that I had anxiety and I didn’t realize I was practicing self-care and using exercise as a management strategy, I recognized in myself that it was helpful and did it because of that.

Also, exercise is another one of those things that my co-worker’s counsellor friend said had to be in place before they would treat someone for anxiety: 30 minutes of physical activity outside 5 times a week. Not that I want to validate her argument, but it is a counsellor-validated method of managing anxiety.

Ways to use Exercise as Self-Care:

Again, referring to my leading argument, exercise is not the be-all and end-all of mental health management. But it is DEFINITELY beneficial for me, just like sleep hygiene.

1. Exercising outside is extra-beneficial, because experts argue that spending time in nature helps people with mental illness:

3. Have an accountability partner to keep you on track, or use a tracking program if you think you are motivated enough to keep yourself honest.

4. Make sure that what you’re doing is something that you enjoy. Otherwise, it doesn’t work as self-care, even if it is good for your body!

5. Be careful not to overdo it. Listen to your body. Speaking from experience, it is a slippery slope to start to do extra, because then you start to feel bad when you don’t, and you can also make it worse by getting to tired and falling off the wagon entirely. It’s important to strike a balance between getting enough exercise so that your body is happy and healthy, but not doing so much that you’re tired and sore all the time.

The next parts of the post are deeper dives into how I make each of these 5 strategies work for me!

Running

Running is my jam, and it’s been my jam since I was thirteen. I was overweight and unhappy, and my dad introduced me to the Running Room beginner running program, which takes you from running 1 minute and walking 5 all the way to running for an hour without stopping. Its step-by-step, foolproof, structured delivery format made it so easy for me to stay on track and it felt almost magical – just as the program promised, when I completed it, I could run for an hour easily.

As I mentioned earlier, running has been a self-care/anxiety coping strategy for me for a long time. Adding to that, it’s always been something I do outside, rain or shine. I actually often enjoy running in the rain (again, see above). So this definitely hits both on the requirement of exercise to help boost those endorphins and make you happy and keep your body healthy, but also on the need to spend time outside. It helps that I get to run on what I would argue is the most beautiful track in the world, the Stanley Park seawall.

I know that running isn’t for everyone, but the emphasis here is to find a kind of exercise that feels good for you!

Half-Marathon Training Program

Half-marathons are my form of achievable running goals that help me stay motivated. I know that running a half-marathon is achievable, because I’ve done it twice already. I make it a bit more challenging for myself each time by working to run it slightly faster each time. And the Running Room program that I follow gives me an easy way to do that, because it has training programs for different speeds. These programs are laid out perfectly, with runs of varying distances on the same days of the week every week – Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. It’s just perfect. I plop all the runs into my bullet journal well in advance, and then I check them off. Check, check, check. At the end of the program, I’m inevitably shocked that I can run 21.1 kilometres exactly in my goal time, but it’s pretty foolproof! Amazing, and definitely motivating.

May 2017 with my Dad and Sharon, having completed my second half-marathon (BMO Vancouver)!

Bullet Journaling

As I just mentioned, I keep track of my training program by writing it down in my bullet journal. Bullet journaling is definitely a whole other post (or even series of posts), but briefly, I tend to use my bullet journal for to-do lists. If I can check it off in my journal, I’m much more likely to complete a task. So instead of having a friend or family member help keep me motivated, having “training run” on my to-do list motivates me to get those kilometres behind me.

But if you’re not a pen and paper kind of person, having an accountability partner is a great idea to keep you motivated!

Just Love It!

It’s important to love what you’re doing for exercise. I know exercise is necessary for physical health, but in order for it to feel like self-care, it has to be something that makes your body and soul and heart feel good. For example, I hate running on treadmills. So I can’t use that as self-care. But I do love yoga, running, and lifting weights. So I can definitely use those!

Not overdoing it

This one is really important. It’s something that I struggled with when I started training for half-marathons. I always want to push myself further than is necessary, and that inevitably results in injury or exhaustion. That sets me back in the long run. It takes a while to set goals that are achievable but not too easy. You want it to be a bit of a challenge to do, because you get a lot of satisfaction from completing it. However, you don’t want to make it so hard that you hurt yourself or give up. If it happens to you, take a deep breath. It happens to everyone, the very best of us! Each time it happens is a new marker for how to measure your own limits.

Best Wishes!

Hopefully these strategies, if you haven’t thought about or tried them before, will help you like they help me. Exercise is definitely one of those things that I find it hard to motivate myself to do. It’s enjoyable and it makes me feel good, and it’s still hard. It’s especially hard to motivate myself to run when it’s really dark out all the time and almost always raining (a.k.a., November through March here in Vancouver).

But something that’s been my mantra for the last little while is this: Doing Feels Better.

If I run on Monday or Tuesday, I find it’s easier to go for more runs that week. If I don’t, it’s harder to motivate myself and I feel worse and worse because I haven’t been going.

Doing. Feels. Better.

Get moving!

Peace and love,

Bee.

Related posts:

  1. Medication: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 3
  2. Sleep Hygiene: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 1
  3. Thankful Thursday 3: Slowing Down
  4. Thankful Thursday 2: Sunny Vancouver Spring

Sleep Hygiene: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 1

This post is all about the first (and I think probably one of the most important) of the 50 anxiety management strategies I wrote about in my last post: SLEEP.

The Background

When I was in the depths of my worst anxiety and depression, all I wanted to do was sleep. I would drink a coffee, sit on the couch with my book (my favourite coping mechanism aside from napping at the time, which is a terrible option), and promptly fall asleep. ON CAFFEINE.

I’m not one of those people who can tolerate a lot of caffeine. Two cups of coffee and my hands start to shake. At this time I was so anxious that my body was working some serious OT and I was always tired. And then I could never sleep at night. Partly because I’d napped for a lot of the day, and partly because my thoughts kept me up until all hours. And not sleeping at night is a classic “makes anxiety way worse” thing. It also made me want to nap more. And so the vicious cycle continued.

The Three Top Elements of Sleep Hygiene

When I started seeing my family doctor about my anxiety, the first three things she told me were about sleep hygiene:

  1. Aim for about 8 hours of sleep per night. Less might make you feel sleepy during the day. More than 9 or so can increase anxiety and make you feel groggy, in my experience.
  2. Your sleep should start and end at the same time every night. Even on weekends. You can relax your wakeup by about half an hour on weekends if you want. I find that most of the time I don’t need this, because I’m now getting enough sleep through the week anyway). For me this looks like falling asleep around 10 and waking up at 6. On the weekends I’m usually up by 7. I know this can be hard for night owls, especially if they need to start work between 7 and 9, like I do. Fortunately for me, I am a homebody. I’m rarely out late with friends or for events. I prefer to hang out in the afternoons and see 7-o’clock movies. Also fortunately for me, I’ve always been a morning person, so going to sleep a little earlier than my usual 11 ish was not too difficult, especially because…
  3. NO NAPS. My doctor said that I should do everything possible to avoid napping – have a snack, go for a walk, get outside, have a coffee, move around, listen to upbeat music, clean, anything I could think of. Naps feel great when you’re anxious. You get to blissfully forget everything for a while, but then you wake up and everything is a thousand times worse, and you’ve ruined your quality of sleep for overnight.

    I would argue that the no-nap technique helped me even more than a rigid sleep schedule did. I often awoke from a nap in a full panic, more anxious about the things that were on my mind and with less time in the day to tackle them. It’s also, however, been the hardest technique to perfect. Every night now, like clockwork, I get super sleepy at 10 and head to bed, if I’m not already there reading. Every morning my alarm goes off and I get out of bed within about half an hour. I get 8 or more hours of sleep per night. But sometimes the blissful allure of forgetting everything and succumbing to a dreamy, cozy, afternoon nap is just too much to resist. I’m human.

Sleep Struggles

Another problem I’ve had my whole life has been falling asleep. I rarely have trouble staying asleep now, but I did as a child and teen. I was a very light sleeper and would wake up to any sound. My mom tells me that every single night when the local cargo train would go by I would wake up. I remember snippets of this, and I definitely remember the sound.

Thankfully, living in first-year residence at university helped. So did later living in an apartment with terrible, rattling windows. Our windows barely provide a barrier between us and the ambient rainforest-proximal city noises. These include cars, yelling, drunken revelers, emergency vehicles’ sirens, dogs, car alarms, and ferocious wind and rainstorms helped me to overcome my flighty, feather-light sleep style. However, falling asleep has remained a problem.

Going to bed reminds me that tomorrow is coming. It’s my brain’s cue to start worrying about that tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after it. It also dwells on things that happened during the day that were anything less than ideal, and berates itself for not having accomplished enough. No day is ever enough. On particularly bad days, my brain runs through all the horrible things I’ve ever said. It remembers the worst interactions and experiences I’ve ever had with the people who are the most important to me. It imagines possibilities of how I might die a gruesome, premature death. It’s exhausting, but rather than putting me to sleep, it keeps me awake.

Falling Asleep Magic

Recently, and so, so thankfully, in my travels online I discovered this fall-asleep technique from SFU adjunct professor Luc Beaudoin, which is a total dream (pun intended). It is nothing short of magic, seriously.

Essentially, when you want to fall asleep, you pick a four-letter word. It must have no repeating letters, like “bear,” “last,” or my personal favourite when I’ve had a bad day, “f*ck” (let’s not psychoanalyze my word choices). Then you take the first letter and imagine every word you can think of that starts with it. Let’s go with the bear example. Starting with ‘b,’ I might think of bear, bears, beast, beasts, beastly, bent, bend, bending, bends, bender… Of course, when I pick a verb I go through all of its possible forms. This is me we’re talking about. Once you run out of words for the first letter, you move on to the next letter, and so on. I usually barely make it to the third letter before I’m dead to the world.

Reading

Another thing I’ve done my whole life that helps me get ready for sleep is to read. I put my phone on charge away from my bed, and I turn to my analog comfort. Books are probably my favourite thing in the world, besides my family. Their smell, their weight in my hands, their stories, the way they make me feel. They’re almost as good an escape from my as sleep, but they can also make me feel productive, and they help me learn, keep my brain active, and improve my vocabulary and writing.

There are very few nights in my entire life when I can remember going to sleep without having read at least a page of a book. I used to beg for “one more” from my parents when I was tiny, would read under the covers with my Fisher Price tri-colour flashlight  when I was a little older, and would boldly just keep reading past my bedtime with my bedside table lamp or overhead light as a pre-teen and teen. Books and reading have always been a comfort to me, and it helps that reading is often cited as a useful way to relax before bed, improve your sleep, and reduce anxiety in general. It’s a relief to know that at was at least doing one thing right!

Best Wishes!

Hopefully these strategies, if you haven’t thought about or tried them before, will help you like they help me. Now, I’m the first person to admit that they’re hard. It’s especially difficult to make sure you’re doing all of them at once. I’ve recently been finding myself using the plate-spinning analogy for my difficulties with self-care. Imagine that all 50 of my self-care strategies is a plate spinning on a stick that I need to carry at once. Impossible, right? That’s how it feels some days.

How can I keep my apartment clean, stay on top of my work, regularly practice excellent personal hygiene, get enough exercise and sun, get enough nutrients through cooking healthy meals, meditate and practice yoga daily, and have great sleep hygiene all at once? Even just keeping the three sleep plates spinning at once is hard. I’m at a solid 2.5 and I’m struggling to get that third one all the way in the air. It’s been over a year after I started spinning the three of them. That feels too long. But knowing that I’m working on it is half the battle.

Peace and love,

Bee.

 

Related posts:

  1. Exercise: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 2
  2. Self-Care for Anxiety: 50 Strategies
  3. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Coming out on the Sunny Side
  4. Self-Care: The Flower Metaphor

Self-Care for Anxiety: 50 Strategies

There are many “how not to be anxious” and “self-care” lists out there. Those titles alone are just plain ridiculous, because anyone with anxiety knows that you can’t just make it go away. Unfortunately, you can’t just “not.” Usually the absolute worst things you can say to me when I’m anxious or having a panic attack are “Calm down” or “Just breathe.” Let me tell you, I nixed those really early in the game. Dealing with anxiety is about using prevention methods, avoiding triggers, and managing symptoms to make sure that the effects of having the disorder have as little impact on your life as possible. There is no cure for mental illness, but there are my three types of management strategies.

I was recently talking to a co-worker, and she said that she has a friend who is a counsellor and they won’t treat anyone for mental health issues until they are sleeping 8 hours a night, doing 30 minutes of physical activity outside 5 times a week, eating well, and taking both vitamin D and omega 3. It’s a bit severe of a stance to take that could alienate people with severe mental health issues and could also be a barrier for people with any severity of mental health issues to getting help, but it makes an interesting point. Take care of your biological health, and there is a high chance that it will positively affect your mental health.

I went a different route — at the time that my anxiety was at its worst, I was not exercising regularly, sleeping well, or taking vitamins, but I went to see a counsellor and worked from there. I’m pro whatever method you use to try to help yourself. You do you!

Once my overwhelming anxiety began to be managed by therapy (and later meds, but that’s a story for another post), I slowly started working on the physical health aspects with exercise, yoga, and meditation. The physical/biological management strategies have definitely improved my mental health, but I still have anxiety. Many physical self-care items are included in my list because they are helpful. But I want to emphasize that I’m not trying to perpetuate the myth that you can “fix” anxiety by just “going for a walk outside” or “exercising regularly,” as I hear so often. The soundtrack of my life can sometimes seem to sound like a repeating cassette tape that says “I have anxiety,” which is responded to with, “Oh, have you tried exercise?”

Insert eye roll here.

Thankfully, there are many lists out there that are of the “here are my anxiety management strategies, maybe some of them might help you” variety. I want to add a list to that growing library of lists that I turned to when I was first crafting my own coping mechanisms.

I’m not purporting to be the be-all and end-all of “do this and your anxiety is managed,” because I know that these things are absolutely very personal. But I also know that reading other people’s lists helped me to create my own through trial and error. So I hope that at least one thing on my list is something you might not have thought of. Perhaps reading mine will inspire you to create your own! I find that it’s often helpful to read my list to remind myself of things I can easily do to make myself feel even a bit better.

Finally, after working on this post for months, I realized that it was becoming a behemoth, so I decided to simply post my list today, and then in future posts I’ll elaborate on each strategy with personal anecdotes, links, and recommendations.

So without further ado, here’s my (by no means exhaustive) list, categorized into the three types of management strategies I outlined above:

Self-Care 1: Prevention Methods

First, here are the prevention methods that I’m trying to make sure I hit regularly each week.

  1. Regular sleep schedule
  2. Exercise
  3. Medication
  4. Meditation (yes, I had to look twice when I typed this as well)
  5. Yoga
  6. Hydration
  7. Writing
  8. Talking about it
  9. Anxiety-reducing foods
  10. Eating regularly
  11. Hygge
  12. Vitamins
  13. Fighting procrastination

Self-Care 2: Avoiding Triggers

Second, in terms of avoiding triggers, it’s important for me to note that everyone has different triggers. Hopefully you’ll feel less alone reading a (by no means exhaustive) list of some of mine.

  1. Messy workspace
  2. Messy home
  3. Email backlog
  4. Traffic
  5. Crowds
  6. Coffee
  7. Hunger
  8. Deadlines
  9. Evaluations at work
  10. Long days
  11. Being cold
  12. Texting
  13. Sending emails
  14. Running out of food at work
  15. Forgetfulness
  16. Not having a plan
  17. Social gatherings
  18. Medical appointments
  19. Phone calls
  20. Being late

Self-Care 3: Managing Symptoms

Finally, a lot of the things I do to manage my symptoms (such as, if I’ve just had a panic attack or if I’m feeling particularly anxious at any given time) are the same as things I use as prevention methods. I’ll list them again.

  1. Tea
  2. Anxiety-reducing foods
  3. Hygge
  4. Meditation (the t-one this time!)
  5. Yoga
  6. Writing
  7. Reading
  8. Talking about it
  9. Getting shit done
  10. Taking a bath
  11. Lighting candles
  12. Going for a walk or run
  13. Exercise in general
  14. Playing video games
  15. Listening to music
  16. Listening to a podcast
  17. Dance parties

That’s it for now! Can’t wait to share my first in-depth post on self-care, talking all about regular sleep schedules!

Peace and love,

Bee.

Related posts:

  1. Self-Care: The Flower Metaphor
  2. Creativity, Anxiety, and Courage

Job (In)Security: “Millennials’ Problem”

Before I even begin, I need to preface this with my concept of what is a Millennial. For me, the word is not derogatory. It means to be the offspring of a baby boomer. To have inherited their forebears’ work ethic. To add to it heavy doses of creativity and a willingness to collaborate. To be planted in a hostile job market and pitted against heavy competition. We are enthusiastic and resilient, but we also deal with increased occurrences of mental illness. We also have antiquated perspectives placed upon us (especially women). For example, the need to “get a good job, get married, buy a home, settle down, and have a family” in an economy where this is increasingly difficult. Besides, many of us do not feel the urge to do so until later in our lives anyway.

A post-baby boomer job environment

The basic understanding of the world of work for the parents who raised us Millennials is “work hard, and you’ll succeed.” Unfortunately, that perspective did not prepare us for the 21st century. So, when I hear yet another baby boomer from my parents’ generation tell me that success rewards hard work and that I shouldn’t worry too much, I can’t help but roll my eyes, justifiably. How can it not be the problem of millennials to be worried about their futures? What even is success anymore anyway?

I realize that my anxiety is different from regular worry; that it’s an uncontrollable physiological fear response to fear that has little basis. However, the life circumstances that Millennials face should make any normal human being quake in their boots. We are naturally worried about truly worrying circumstances.

It’s just even more fun to handle it when you have an anxiety disorder.

So you want to be a teacher? Good luck.

Which brings my to my particular situation. As a beginning teacher in a province with a terrible job market for teachers (see Christy Clark’s 2002 decimation of our bargaining rights, only recently (February 2017) won back in the Supreme Court of Canada), job security is, needless to say, poor; that is, if you can even get a job to begin with.

In September 2013, when I began my Bachelor of Education program, the Secondary Education practicum coordinator had all ~300 of us in a lecture hall and began with, “You will not get a job.”

I graduated with my BEd in August of 2014, and I applied to be a TTOC (Teacher Teaching on Call – for all my New Brunswicker friends, this is a glorified term for ‘sub’) in every district, even those that weren’t recruiting at the time. It was a summer of many applications and zero calls. It didn’t help that BC teachers were on strike — what perfect timing.

A common theme: Sacrifice to get your start

I got lucky, as I made a follow-up call to a district where I had applied to be a TTOC. It turned out that they were looking for a French, English, and Social Studies teacher, which matched my qualifications almost exactly, and they asked me to apply. Sounds perfect, right? The only problem? This district was 6 hours north of Vancouver and I would have to leave home and fiancé behind and live alone for at least a year. I applied, and the interview was essentially an advertisement for how much I would enjoy life up in their neck of the woods.

I accepted the offer (how could I not, it was the only one I got!) and sat on my hands for most of September. As soon as the job action ended, I hauled ass up to the BC interior desert land. I worked there for the year, and peaced the heck out when I was finished. I loved the job, but the place was not for me for an extended period. Frequent trips on a tiny-ass plane that made me feel like I was in the middle of the Donnie Darko crash scene were my mental saving grace.

Another new start

I returned to Vancouver and once again entered the TTOC application race. Fortunately, this year, the district where I completed my practicum was accepting applications for French Immersion TTOCs. I applied, and eventually got the job. Thus began my career in the Lower Mainland.


Great, right? Pretty great, except that some months as a TTOC (namely September and June), you only work an average of 6 days. So I also had to stay at my other part-time job shift managing at McDonald’s. I spent my days religiously poring over our finances. Every morning, I counted the number of days I had worked so far that month. I created a formula to figure out how much I earned per day after taxes and deductions. I would figure out exactly how much I needed to work to “get by.” And of course, I’m one of the lucky ones, with a husband who has a steady job with benefits, which cover most of my prescription and extended health needs. However, as a TTOC, I don’t get access to teacher benefits so I’m still out-of-pocket for a number of things.

I spent the year last year as a TTOC, but I also picked up 2 months of a 1-block contract. 1 block. Out of 8. That’s what they had on offer! I loved it, but it also reduced my ability to TTOC, as I was unavailable in the afternoons every other day, and ended up reducing the amount of money I made overall. But contracts are currency in my district. TTOCs don’t get seniority, and seniority is what gets you a continuing contract (permanent – for my NB friends, a B contract).

Pair this with anxiety…

This transitional period in my life has me thinking. Particularly about what it’s like, for a person with anxiety specifically, to deal with a lack of job security. This is something so many millennials like me face for years once we graduate. The common perspective of older generations about millennials seems to be that we’re lazy, when in fact there are just not enough jobs to go around. Workers are taking later retirements. Companies and governments are squeezing wherever they can to save money in a tough economy. Cost of living is now exponentially higher compared to average salaries versus 30 years ago.

I’m  a new teacher. I have anxiety. It’s hard to convince myself that I am worthy of the districts I’m applying to. It’s hard to convince myself that the reason my 100s of applications are returning no calls is that everyone else that applied had more seniority than me (highly likely, at this point). The amount of dead air I’ve encountered in response to my job searches, I’m sure, is enough to cripple a normal person, but a person who doubts every single word they say? Crushing.

I often tell myself I got lucky again when I pick up another small contract. I need to remind myself that I’m likely getting them now because I am becoming more skilled and more recognized and valued by the schools I am working for. My anxiety leads me to constantly think the worst about myself – to constantly assume that I am not worthy.

Lack of structure…

One of the things I find toughest to deal with as a person with anxiety is a lack of structure. This comes with unemployment. It’s also provided by the long breaks that I have in my profession as a teacher.

Now, I’m definitely not complaining about the (remember, unpaid) time we get off at holidays and in the summer. However, I often find that during those periods of my life, my anxiety is at its peak. I grow listless and depressed, and become increasingly anxious about not accomplishing anything, which then paralyzes me even more. I definitely feel the need to take on big artistic projects in the summer especially. These could be redesigning the layout and decor of my apartment, creating a scrapbook, or undertaking a photography project. I then create a day schedule in which I work toward project completion for at least a certain number of hours each day. I also dedicate day parts to relaxation, reflection, cleaning, and exercise.

Unclear schedules…

Sometimes more difficult are the days I don’t get a callout in the evening or early morning. This doesn’t mean that I am off for the day – callout is open until 1:30 pm. I could spend my morning assuming I’ve got the day off, only to have the phone ring at 1pm for the afternoon. Sometimes, I’m settling into the couch with a book at 8:30, and I get a call demanding I brave the worst of the morning’s traffic to be at a school for 9. On these days, it’s impossible to have a schedule. First, they are unexpected days off. I generally don’t have an anxiety-calming schedule created for a day when I expect to be working. However, they are also not necessarily days off, so I have to structure my time such that I can grab food and run out the door at a moment’s notice.

The dog’s breakfast…

There is also a lack of structure in the career development process for young teachers. We often get what is known as the “dog’s breakfast,” if we can even snatch that. Anything is better than being on call! In that first contract I took, I had 5 preps – French 7, French 8, French 9, English 8, and Social Studies 8. The normal maximum for any sane person is 4, preferably 3. This past year, I covered a paternity leave and had 5 again – French 8, French 9, French 10, French 11, and FRAL 8.

And negative amounts of security.

All of this with no clear “end” in sight. The “end” for me means having a full-time continuing contract. This equals working every day for the same district, receiving health benefits, and having the right to take leave (maternity or otherwise). My current school district requires 2 consecutive years of full-time contract work plus an extra contract before they award you continuing. To make matters worse, if a teacher goes 6 months plus 1 day between any contracts, all previously accumulated seniority disappears. For example, my current contract extends until June 30. That means that I have until December 30 to get another contract, or I lose the 1.5 years of seniority I now have. That’ would have been 75% of the way to a continuing contract. It’s a terrifying, paralyzing space to live in every day of my existence.

We’re losing such great people

I speak what I know. This is what I know about an increasingly difficult teaching market: it continually loses bright stars due to the difficulty of finding a secure job. A very small percentage of the wonderful people I met throughout the Education program are working in schools. Many did end up in educational positions that are unrelated to the private or public K-12 systems. However, many others work retail or administrative jobs or went back to school to do something else.

This is not just my problem, not just teachers’ problem

I am confident that my situation is not unique. Nor is it to unique to the teaching profession. My peers across the country, and the world, face very similar struggles. Small wonder that even more people do not deal with anxiety or other mental health disorders than already do.

But what can I do?!

I wish I could propose a solution, but I don’t really see one. The only thing that really helps to settle my anxiety is to work toward the fulfillment of my values, regardless of how I earn money. I think that to feel fulfilled in our lives, we need to do a few simple things:

  • do something for work that we enjoy
  • live life according to our values, in the greatest capacity of which we are capable
  • work hard
  • be creative
  • collaborate
  • ask for help
  • reflect
  • love ourselves
  • breathe

The rest is positivity and hoping for the best! This list is gets me through the worst of times and the best of times. Add a bit of luck, which often comes from that  positive perspective, and hopefully, you’ll find your days are more fulfilling than not.

Peace and love,

Bee.

 

 

No related posts.

Creativity, Anxiety, and Courage

I learned three important things quite early on.

One, that creativity requires courage. Two, that anxiety demands courage. And three, that being creative with anxiety requires even more courage than either of those alone. For a long time, I found it too difficult to muster the courage required to share my creative passions because I was crippled by anxiety about the value of, and possible response to, my work. You may be thinking to yourself, “Just do what you love, it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks.” That’s easier said than done when you’re battling with anxiety. It wasn’t until recently that creating became worth the effort again. I want to share that story.

First, creativity requires courage.

For anyone. It’s courageous to create something and put it out into the world. I have always been a creative person, and until anxiety came around, I was able to find that courage regularly.

Second, anxiety requires courage.

It’s a similar kind of courage to that required by creativity. Anxiety causes me to fear and worry about almost everything. But I live my life despite the worry and fear, and that is courageous.

Third, creativity and anxiety together require even more courage, for me at least.

I wrote creatively a lot in high school but I stopped when my anxiety got worse. Why?  I worried endlessly about what people think of me and what I put out into the world.
First, I have an incredibly strong need for people to like me. I also have a terrible fear that people will dislike me. I worry about these constantly.
Second, myself and my creative work are the same. I put so much of myself into what I create. I think that a valuation of my work is a valuation of my person.

The courage required to conquer these two things together – anxiety and creativity – was too much to muster all at once for a very long time.

It is partly that fear that has prevented me from starting this blog for so long. Remember when I said it took me two years to write my first post? I was afraid that people wouldn’t like my writing. That they would think my opinions weren’t well thought-out. I was nervous that I would get attacked for my ideas. It wasn’t the expanse of the Internet I was afraid of, or even the most grizzly, snot-nosed, pockmarked Internet trolls. That’s another aspect of my anxiety – I’m not afraid of people I don’t know. Only people I care about. To some, that might seem backwards, but it makes total sense to me. The people I care about are the people whose opinions about me worry me the most, because I don’t want them to stop liking me or to stop wanting to be in my life.

The more I value a person’s opinion, the more I fear sharing my creative work with them. Case and point: I didn’t tell my husband what I was writing about on my blog (although he did know I was starting it), nor did I directly share my work with him, because I was too nervous about what he would think. I only found out he’d been reading it after last week’s (my second) post. When he told me he enjoyed reading it, I felt like the weight of my patronus fell off my shoulders. (Nerd joke alert, my patronus is an elephant. Quite possibly the subject of another post.) I also told very few of my friends that I was even thinking of starting a blog before I linked my first post to my Facebook page.

If there is one thing that has increased my courage in terms of pursuing and sharing my creative passions, it has to be an Instagram community that I recently joined called Bookstagram. Users create accounts with bookish (“of or relating to books” – Merriam-Webster) names and post exclusively about books and related fandoms. I have no idea how it began, but it now has thousands of members and probably millions of users interacting with it daily. It is undefined, and markedly different from Instagram itself, while working within its boundaries.

I discovered it a while ago and it interested me immediately – I already loved reading, talking about books, collecting, and taking photographs. But I was hesitant to join. I worried that my photos somehow wouldn’t meet imaginary standards and that the community wouldn’t accept me. Looking back now, that sounds ridiculous. I don’t know that there exists a more welcoming or inclusive community on Instagram. Regardless, I watched from afar for a good couple of years. I didn’t see the point because I assumed I would never have any success with it, and I felt shame for wanting to be just like them – what kind of 20-something collects figurines associated with books and TV shows, and spends most of her time reading and photographing her collections? I was ashamed of and anxious about my passion.

In November, I was feeling comfortable in my new job, and had begun reading for pleasure a lot for the first time since high school. I also had the funds to be able to buy more books and start collecting funko pop! vinyl figurines. I started following more Bookstagrammers, took photos of my books and funkos, and even posted a few on my regular Instagram account. I really enjoyed it. Suddenly, something clicked. The worry about what people would think of me and the shame I was feeling began to weigh less than the enjoyment I got out of finally being passionate and creative again. A few months later, I mustered up all the courage that I could find in my body and created a Bookstagram account. It was more successful than I ever could have hoped, and it brings me so much joy.

My whole point here is that sharing one’s creative work always takes courage. Doing it as a person with anxiety inherently requires even more of that daring.

Through my experience with Bookstagram, I realized that doing what I love feels way better than not doing it for fear that it will negatively impact people’s opinions of me. My whole point here is that sharing one’s creative work always takes courage. Doing it as a person with anxiety inherently requires even more of that daring. It’s scary stuff, putting yourself out there. But it’s so worth it.

That feeling is what bolstered my courage and helped me begin writing this blog as well. No one could ever have convinced me that people would enjoy my writing. Just like no one could have convinced me that people would think my enormous book and funko collection and my photographs of it were awesome. The only thing that could and did quiet my fears was putting those things out there and observing the response (which ended up being very positive).

That brings me to my next point. I realized something new about my anxiety when I started to take leaps and share my creative work: even if the response to my Bookstagram account or my blog hadn’t been positive, that wouldn’t have been a problem, because I wouldn’t have had any scary “what if?”s to worry about anymore.

I have to experience firsthand the things that worry me to be free of them.

This is simultaneously the hardest and easiest part of my anxiety to manage: I have to experience firsthand the things that worry me to be free of them. This is difficult because I tend to want to avoid the things that worry me or wish they would go away. It is also magical, because there is a sure-fire way for me to stop worrying – to tackle what I’m worrying about head-on.

I post some photos that are less successful. That’s too bad, but at least I don’t have to worry about the response to them once they’re posted. Whether it’s positive or negative, my brain no longer has to worry about making up scary possibilities. It’s much easier to deal with what is than to worry about the things my brain makes up about what could be. All I have to do is take a leap and share my work. I say “all I have to do” like it’s nothing, but it really does require a big dose of courage. I’m getting better and better at this with time.

There will always be people who love what you love.

Generally, I find that if you create something with passion, people will respond well to it. If they don’t, that’s too bad for them. Friends are there to support you doing what you love, and if they’re unsupportive, they’re not worth your time.

There will always be people who love what you love.  People who are inspired by the joy that you take from what you invest yourself in. People who try to put you down for the things you love really don’t merit your energy.

Having these realizations doesn’t mean that I don’t worry about the quality of my creative work or people’s opinions anymore. Anxiety doesn’t just go away. But now, the joy of creating and sharing things is more important than the worry that tries to prevent me from doing those things. The good outweighs the worry.

Courage is the choice to still be anxious, but to be creative and put my stuff out there anyway. To take the leap any time I share something.

Now I just take a deep breath, pick up my tool of choice, and create.

Bee.

Related posts:

  1. What is Lexical Abandon?
  2. Self-Care for Anxiety: 50 Strategies
  3. Lexical Abandon’s Life Lately
  4. Sleep Hygiene: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 1