Everyone has their own way of reacting to stress, I suppose. I have several.
I’ve had a few times when I’ve had all-out panic attacks. I can’t settle down, my heart is racing, I’m agitated … it’s almost too much to bear. It’s been awhile since I’ve had one of those. I don’t even know how I got out of them, now that I think about it.
More often, it’s a slow broil. I appear calm on the outside … but there’s a constant sense of foreboding on the inside.
More than that, I turn inward. I don’t go out as much, keep to myself more. I let unanswered emails, messages and phone calls pile up.
If you don’t know me well, it’s hard to figure out if I’m in one of those periods because, as an introvert, I’m a little like that anyway. It’s just that when I’m under stress, I’m that way but even more.
Sometimes there’s no trigger that I’m aware of, this time I can pinpoint it to the day.
That’s when it started anyway. Although, to be honest, I didn’t have the same sense of foreboding I do now. I thought maybe he’d be happy to stay out of jail. He’d start rebuilding his big wall again and claim victory on the good economy he inherited… It wouldn’t be great, but it wouldn’t be terrible.
But in the last month is when my stress started escalating to a whole new level. He’s not going to be satisfied with a victory level, he’s determined to mindlessly tear everything down with his unelected co-president. And I don’t have a lot of confidence that either of them know what they’re doing.
So yes, absolutely - I have this sense of foreboding. What is going to go wrong and when is it going to happen? Are we going to get ourselves mired in another war? Are terrorists going to exploit a weakness to launch a deadly attack? Could another pandemic strike, deadlier than the last? How many deadly plane crashes will there be in the next four years?
It’s a much more chaotic world than one we’ve ever experienced in our lifetime, that’s for sure. How much more deadly is it going to be? I can only wait and see. I hope I’m wrong.
To deal with this mental pressure, I find myself following the news a lot more. Keeping watch. Assessing the dangers. Looking for any glimmers of hope I can find. Looking for alternatives. Determining who might be responsible.
It’s hard to focus on much else. I have a difficult time concentrating. I listen to a lot less music than I used to. Sometimes an old favorite song will move and delight me as much as before, but I have much less patience for new stuff. I’ll think, Why am I doing this? I could be assessing the newest danger …
I know it’s pointless. I know I have no power to influence events or protect myself from a world far out of my control. The only thing I know how to do is watch …
The only way out is through.
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