Confessional

Several months ago I made a doctors appointment. I made it under the guise that it would be a regular check up to sort out my late night google searches and determine if I was in fact suffering from any and all of the Web MD illnesses that would plague me dead at any given moment. In truth, I really could pinpoint exactly what I wanted to talk about, and not dilly dally around the issue, but even though mental health has taken a front seat in People magazine, it still holds several layers of stigma in my immediate and far away world.

I chatted with the nurse taking my weight and my blood pressure. I complimented her scrubs and her glasses, making small talk to distract myself from the real conversation I was about to happen. When Dr. Briscoe walked in, I liked her instantly. The practice that I go too, tends to revolve Doctors often and hence she would not stick around for much longer, but she was here for an important conversation. We went through all the ins and outs of my medical chart. Yes still taking the same emergency inhaler, of course still suffering from the same shitty skin I had been entrusted with. She then leaned over with kind Dumbledore like eyes and rested her clipboard against her chest, looking at me intently.

“So what do you really want to talk about?”

I could have chickened out. I have many times before and this was also the very first time I was meeting this doctor. I wanted to tell her about feeling out of control sometimes, with small things and large things. I wanted to tell her I am so immobilized by my anxiety, sometimes driving in a small snow storm, or leading parent teacher conferences, can feel so claustrophobic, so life altering, that it takes everything in me to do that one task. I wanted to tell her, that sometimes it affects my kids and I don’t always say the best things to them, when I am struggling against myself. I wanted to tell her that in my effort to please friends and family, sometimes I am the saddest person in the room.

Instead I said none of those things and just being to cry. She looked at me harder, but not out of pity.

“Sometimes I get so anxious about things that don’t really matter,” I told her.

She nodded and implored me to keep going. I panicked that maybe I had come to the wrong person. Maybe she would think I was crazy.

“How many panic attacks have you had?” She asked, doing nothing with the clipboard. “Any history of anxiety or depression in your family?”

I was so glad she wasn’t writing anything down because I don’t think that clipboard could hold all the details of the surplus of anxiety that blankets both sides of my relatives. I simply nodded and then recounted my different panic attacks and the triggers that were precursors for them. I told her about teaching, taking masters courses, my kids and their activities, leading something called SLO professional development presentations, working out and then eating more to capitalize when I worked out. I told her about crying in my car before work, about needing a change of pace at work and moving to a different grade level, but not being sure how to ask for it. She listened for a long time. Then she told me very quietly, but very resolutely that anyone would feel pushed to the brink with all that going on. She then said she could do meds if I wanted, but only if I wanted. She asked more about the exercise and I told her it really helped. The running, the spinning, the weight lifting, it never made a big difference in looking like a Carrie Underwood, but it made a big difference in what I could handle for the day, the endorphin rush, the feeling of control. Well, she said after we had haggled back and forth about medication, if you don’t want to try meds yet, I want you to try this and she said to treat my workouts like medication and do them everyday or almost everyday and to make that and myself a priority. She said if that kept everything in check, we didn’t need to talk again, but it it didn’t we surely would speak again.

I felt a weight lifted, to be heard and to be validated. She also told me to let one of the spinning plates go. It didn’t have to crash on the floor, but I could slow the plate gently and give the responsibility to someone else or let go of it all together. This led to the end of the SLO presentation meetings, and eventually a change of grade level. It led to me volunteering for zero committees at work, zero PTA responsibilities at my kids’ school. It led to more working out and getting up earlier to do it. A lot of people think I run because I am running for a race or trying to drop 25 pounds. Both would be nice, but I am running more for my mental health than anything else. You will notice broken down tractors and goats are going at a faster pace than me down the road, this makes absolutely no difference in the benefit that I get from running.

It feels super raw and vulnerable to write these things down because I know a lot of my readers through a work or a professional setting, but the truth of the matter is, that work was the only time where the anxiety would be kept at bay and at night and on the weekends I would crash and burn. I have decided it’s okay that when people see me they see all my imperfections and my battles and that it is okay to ask for help when I can’t manage them all myself. Additionally, not all medicine comes in pill form. If it does great, if it doesn’t, do what works for you. I typically ask for comments but not all posts warrant one. Be good to yourself, especially the parts that are the hardest to love.