I wish I was way better at staying calm. It would really help me so much in the long term. But I'm not good at staying calm. No, not at all. I get so worked up so easily. And beyond that, I'm also the kind of person who jumps at shadows. It's awful. It's really awful to deal with it all. Especially since almost anything can set me off. And once I've been set off, good luck calming me down. I can be waist deep in a bout of stomach pain and nausea and anxiety before you can start trying to help calm me down. I'm not good at managing my mental state, and so I pay the full price of that with each new day.
It's exhausting. To make myself calm down when I'm stressed (as I often am) feels like a massive undertaking. It's just a big undertaking, one I find truly exhausting to deal with. I am not a naturally calm person. I'm a naturally stressed person, as much as I wish I wasn't one.
I wish I could meditate. I wish I could control my temper much more naturally. I wish I had things like that backing me up. But I don't have that, sadly. I wish I did, but I don't.
I am so easily scared. It is ridiculous. If not for my dad being here to help me manage my sensitivity and my cowardice and my fears, I think I would already have had a nervous breakdown by now. Because I am a coward. I own up to it, and I use the term with confidence. I am a coward and I will always be a coward, and I see no shame in that. Horror movies sear into my brain and traumatize me every single time. I jump at the sound of booming thunder and at the sight of flashing lighting. I jump whenever a flash bulb goes off in photography. My reflexes are bad and my nerves are always shot to high heaven. I can't be calm when I'm constantly afraid and on edge. I'm afraid of heights and loud noises and unexpected sounds and more. I jump whenever someone walks up behind me. Every single time that I'm not expecting it, I go about a foot in the air. I'm not someone with good nerves. I'm incredibly neurotic and intensively nervous. I am not someone who feels brave often. When I'm really scared, I can't even deal with the darkness. I have had months where I was horrified to sleep because something had scared me weeks prior.
I'm also a hypochondriac, something I inherited from my mom and especially from my nana. If I'm not feeling well, I'll sometimes look up the symptoms and make myself paranoid. I never jump to assuming I have cancer or anything, but I do panic and make hasty leaps in logic. If I'm feeling congested constantly (as has been the case for a good while now), I'll start panicking about potentially being congested forever because of all this. If I need to pee a lot (another thing which has been the case for me a lot lately), I'll overthink it and begin worrying about having weak or sensitive nerve endings in my genitalia. Sometimes I'll even begin worrying it's something like an infection, when it may merely be something related to my sexuality or what have you. There was a time when I got so freaked out about my teeth feeling sore that I had to go the dentist urgently to be reassured I was feeling okay. That actually happened twice in recent months.
I still have more examples of my hypochondria and paranoia. If I hear loud lightning and thunder, I begin panicking that the house will lose power. If we're going to leave the house on a trip, I panic and sequester myself in the bathroom for almost an hour sometimes. If we're leaving, I also sometimes begin compulsively downloading articles onto my phone. That way I'll have something to read if I need something to help distract me while we're outside or whatever. If this doesn't showcase my hypochondria and paranoia, I don't know what will.
On a similar note, I also deal with a ridiculously low pain tolerance. When my dad shaves me, I feel as almost every single hair is tugged on. When I get a needle, I feel it. When I bite my own nails, I feel that one too. I'm incredibly sensitive to pain, because I'm sensitive to all forms of physical sensation. I feel like I'm sensitive in so many ways. Sometimes I'll have something that's more numb on me, but that's rare. I usually seem pretty hyperaware and hypersensitive, and that can really mess me up. I don't like that I'm so sensitive, but there's nothing I can do about it.
Besides this, I think I'm pretty sensitive to other people's stress. When my dad is stressed out, I get stressed out. Then I feed off of their stress and get even more stressed out. Then it all just becomes a great big feedback loop. Today, for example, my dad is stressing because his work benefits don't seem to cover my many medications anymore. So he's stressing about that, which is causing me to stress about that, and soon there's this horrible feedback loop of stress brewing.
Hopefully this paints a picture of why I struggle with being calm. It's not only because I get angry a lot (although that certainly is something I deal with), it's also because I'm easily scared or stressed or prone to panic. I'm just generally very sensitive and scared paranoid and upset, and so it's hard for me to keep myself from having outbursts and panic attacks.
PS: I'll update if my medicine situation is still messed up later. Because that's really bugging me right about now.
