I love my routine. I have an anxiety disorder and change triggers it. I also have OCD, so when there’s a change in my life, I fixate on it. People say to do something else to get your mind off of it, but it feels like it is EVERYTHING. Depending on how big the life change is, it takes a week to a month for me to feel normal again.
I liken it to a roller coaster. Life is going great, you’re on a straight course. Then you work your way up to the top of a hill, and then you’re shooting down at rocket speed into a loop, and the feeling in your stomach isn’t the elation and adrenaline of such an awesome experience, it’s a feeling of dread and panic. And then people tell you to just think about something else and go about your life, but all you can think is I’m on a crazy double loop and you want me to just forget that?!
So I’m here talking to you guys while I work through the craziness and wait for the straight track to come again. How do y’all feel when things are changing so much for you?
Frustrated and ineffectual. I need plans. I can deviate once they’re made but I need to know that if things go to shit, I can always return to base, as it were.
I feel you. I had stuff going along really well then my grandpa died. It wasn’t sudden, and he was 88, but the feelings I went through and stuff that I’ve been thinking about and just having him gone have thrown me into a tailspin. I haven’t been myself for like 2 months now.
I don’t know how I ever managed to get through stuff like moving or breaking up with boyfriends!
Right now I am concentrating on staying normal. Eating, sleeping, working, showering, taking care of the dog. It’s taking a lot of work.
You just keep plodding through as best you can, one foot in front of the other. When your alarm goes off in the morning, you get up - don’t think about it, don’t wallow, don’t roll back over, just get up. Brush your teeth, wash your hair, do all the normal stuff in as routine a fashion as is possible.
I don’t deal with many of the issues you describe though I have been close to people who do.
What I wanted to say was that even someone who is fairly grounded and/or for lack of a better word, ‘normal’, goes through the same emotions you do!
I am in the midst of some personal issues that have been taking over a year to play out with little progress being made. I prefer to spend time alone on weekends to decompress, I occasionally lose sleep, I get upset, I get angry, I want both company and solitude.
So in short I just wanted to say though it all sucks and you feel real bad, it’s actually fairly normal to feel that way, and it will indeed work out in the end.
One of my favorite things I like to remind myself of is this: There are 7 billion people on this planet, surely there are many who have had to deal with exactly the same thing I am dealing with, and many of those have come through successfully. All I have to do is figure out what they did and I can succeed too. In the end we are not alone, just merely disconnected from our answers.
I don’t know how old you are, but I’m finding that my 30s are much more stable than my 20s. I had a lot of different jobs back then, and I moved a lot too. So I was always a nervous wreck, on the edge of a breakdown. But now that I’m well into my 30s, I have been finally able to relax into a fixed, familiar routine. The only changes I deal with on a regular basis are small, piddly ones.
Oh man, I know that feeling. I always include an escape plan if I can. Even if it’s as simple a thing as driving myself to a party so I don’t have to depend on a ride from someone else and not be able to leave until they do.
But being an adult means you can’t always have your escape plan. Changing jobs? Moving cities? Eeeep!
This really resonates for me. I was being vague in my OP, but what I’m trying to do right now is get a new job in a slightly different field and, if I’m lucky, secure a transfer to a city closer to my family in a few years. But the only people I have in this city are my work friends, so I’m terrified to leave them.
I only have a virtual support network here, it’s a scary thing to know that I’m coming home to an empty apartment and no one to spend time with.
Here’s to hoping! I’m 26, so a few years to go yet.
Getting my mind off of it never worked. What has worked for me is to redefine the uncertainty. I tend towards experiencing uncertainty as anxiety, being worried about bad things happening. I made a conscious choice to instead experience it as anticipation, looking forward to doing my best with the changes and seeing good things happen. It’s not easy to do, but I have found it to be very helpful.