Safety

Since discharge last Friday, I've actually been doing pretty well. Not perfect on my meal plan, but I don't belive that recovery is a perfect process. I'm doing my best every day, even with my stomach issues, which have been getting better as well. Positives always need to be balanced with negatives though. I have been really struggling with anxiety and feelings of safety.

My anxiety is always there. Some days, it's really high; others, it's manageable. Lately, I've had higher anxiety days. It started on Saturday with a pretty major flashback. I haven't had a really bad one in quite a while, so it has been really overwhelming. I woke up really early on Sunday feeling very unsafe in my body and apartment. It's unnerving when you are so terrified of things that you rationally know would probably never happen. You just sit and fear and pray it calms down. None of this has been made any easier with the situations in my community right now.

Ferguson has been blowing up the news. While I am pretty close to downtown St Louis, a solid 25 minutes from there, it still has not added to my feelings of being unsafe. Because no one has any idea how wide spread things will be, I have a hard time using rationalization to calm myself down. At the same time, the likelihood of anything happening to me at this time is slim to none. Rationally, I know I am safe. Irrationally, I am waiting for someone to break through my door any second. So, it's been a difficult balance.

Through all this, I am proud to say that I have kept to my meal plan pretty well. I think it's just difficult to feel constantly afraid and have limited ways to calm down. I've been a homebody since Saturday. I have barely left my building, which is only making things more overwhelming. So, the next challenge is to actually physically battle my irrational fear rather than hide in my apartment and panic.

Fear is a powerful thing. It has the ability to shut everything down in an instant. We are wired to freeze or fly. It's our reactions to these fearful situations that determine how we move forward in life or stay stuck.