anxiety – Page 3 – Amanda Salisbury

Of Zebras and Workhorses

The most excellent thing about having flu A last week: I had very few worries about Covid-19. I knew about it and vaguely considered the ways it impacted my family, but my nervous nervous system was subdued by flu.

This morning was the first day I awoke feeling truly like I had overcome the flu. Yay! And cue the nervous nervous system.

My stomach clenched. My chest ached. I could not breathe or function. What was happening? Was the flu back? No. Just plain old stress as usual.

Only it’s not plain, old, or usual. It’s fancy and new and, dare I say, novel. These are strange times with zebra worries. But that doesn’t mean I get to ignore the plain, old, usual workhorses of worry. The things I’ve always worried about remain. Notable exceptions: I don’t worry about school shootings currently, which is amazing; I don’t worry about my husband’s commute, as he doesn’t have one; I don’t worry about the ordinary school worries, as my kids are home. But my low-level anxiety over my kids, husband, extended family, community, and self continue for the most part.

Additionally, the zebra worries. What if Covid-19…No, but really, what if Covid-19…What if the vulnerable people I love contract it? What if we all contract it? What if people lose their jobs in droves? What if we have a New Great Depression? What if?

Zebra worries are a sort of bread and butter for writers. The propensity to generate those what-ifs grants a writer a powerful tool to explore ideas. Left unchecked, zebra worries become an ever-growing stampede of anxiety that can and will kill.

So it’s time to get back to checking the zebras. And back to work and managing the workhorse worries.

Last night we sat down with our boys and explained that this is our new normal: We are all at home for the foreseeable future. We each have jobs to do. We each have work stations and schedules and responsibility to keep to them. I said, “Do not make this a possibility in your minds. Make it an absolute. This is happening right now. Absolutely.”

We will have bumps, like any group of people working in close quarters. The kids will need sufficient guidance to follow any sort of home education program three-quarters into the school year. Among us we have a mom, dad, preteen, and two teens. We will need to build in breathing room.

What’s my point? Those are workhorses. Not zebras. Consuming myself with zebras I can do little about [but seriously, follow the CDC guidelines], carries me further from situating my workhorses of time management, household management, mothering, education, and creative work.

If you’re feeling a little zebra-focused, bring your eyes back home. Where your workhorses are. Make a plan and work the plan. And we will, inasmuch as is possible for each of us, all get through this together.

Wakeful

A while ago I wrote about being sleepy. I now have an answer, a reason for all that sleepiness: sleep apnea. It’s not sexy, but it’s also not conversion disorder, which was my big fear.

So there’s something actually wrong that the data supports, and you cannot imagine how exciting that is to someone who has dealt with conversion disorder. It’s a sort of validation. That my anxiety is not so all-powerful that it is changing the way I sleep or forcing me to sleep throughout the day.

My CPAP machine has not yet been delivered, but I’ve been coping for a little while now on a new medication. In my Sleepy post, I mentioned a sample. I since received a prescription for a medication called Sunosi. I first took a sample dose in late November and began a prescription in December.

I cannot tell you whether anyone else should ever take this medication, but I can tell you my experience. Precious little is written anecdotally about this medication on the internet as of today, as I found when it was first prescribed for me.

If you want to read about Sunosi and its mechanism for working, its risks, and all that, go here. If you want to know what it has been like to take the medication, read on.

The medication begins at a small dose and increases at intervals until the patient is taking the highest indicated dose. During that transitional period, I had my first passes with being awake, really awake, in a long time. But I also experienced crashes. A few to several hours after a dose, I would crash and all my sleep pressure would tumble down on me with force. However, once I settled on my highest dose for a couple of weeks, the crashes disappeared. The medication granted me about nine hours of alert wakefulness, which was amazing, truly, but I thought there might be a way to extend my day.

I asked and was given permission by my doctor to take half of my dose in the morning and the other half six hours later. This was when a switch flipped in my life. I went from sleeping 14-16 hours every day to being awake 13-15 hours. Most days, no naps.

Now when I am awake, I am alert and capable. I don’t see life through a haze. I am engaged with the people in my life and with my work. I arise in the morning and go to bed in the evening, and it feels terrific.

For a long time, sleeping, particularly daytime sleeping, has felt to me like my own moral failure. Now I see that morality has nothing to do with this situation. My depression is in as small a place as it’s been in years, maybe ever. My anxiety doesn’t overwhelm me often; I’ve had one panic attack in two months. Despite feeling like I went to sleep in my thirties and awoke in my forties, I am more positive, motivated, and assured than I have felt in so very long.

I look forward to getting the CPAP machine. I look forward to oxygenating my brain and body throughout a night of sleep. I am eager to see how that impacts my life. (And, yes, I know it may be a bumpy road.)

But, y’all, being awake is nothing short of inspiring. If you’re struggling with oversleeping, see your doctor. See a sleep doctor. Get help, because help exists. You do not have to sleep through all of your life. You can carve out times to be present and available and awake.