mental health

When My Anxiety Met The Air Canada Angel in LHR Terminal 2

~ sweetlifestyle
Mount Lebanon
Mount Lebanon

Do you believe in angels? I definitely do, because I recently met one in London Heathrow’s Terminal 2.

Here’s how it happened.

In late September, I was transiting in London Heathrow, en route from Beirut to Toronto. I had just spent two weeks visiting family and friends in the beautiful mountain villages of Lebanon — something I hadn’t done in a couple of summers.

The Lebanon trip was my second in 6 months, and it was a trip with a purpose: my brother and his wife had just had preemie twins and I wanted to see the babies and lend any support given the babies would be in the neo-natal intensive care unit for the foreseeable future. My mother had fractured her back and had been going through a hard time. And, selfishly, I wanted to visit during warmer months of the year, versus my annual trip in March.

Because I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder and because my biggest trigger is travel-related, this long trip from Canada takes a lot out of me and it takes a lot of preparation on my part. I see my family doctor and my therapist regularly before I leave. I visit with our priest. I watch the news like a hawk, assessing the political and economic situation in Lebanon and supplementing my understanding by consulting family members who are closer to the action.

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12 Ways I ‘Self-Care’ That Make A Huge Difference In My Day

~ sweetlifestyle ~ 8 Comments

‘Self-Care’ is a term we’re all hearing these days, and for good reason: life is busier and more stressful than ever. I often wonder why that’s the case for me, given that my kids are in their teens and need less physical attention…but it is what it is. I thought life might get a bit easier, but it’s a different type of worry that creeps in as your kids grow up. That’s why self-care is something I’m focusing on more and more.

What is self-care? It can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you’re doing things that make you feel better mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. It’s also important to be cognizant of the need for self-care, because if you don’t manage your stress and energy, nobody else will do it for you.

And, what works for others might not work for you, so taking the time to figure out your best self-care techniques is important. Only you know what works best for you.

July 24th is National Self-Care Day, so I thought I would share my self-care techniques in the hopes of inspiring you to engage in the self-care that you need.

Here are the 12 things I do in terms of self-care that make a huge difference in my day and, consequently, in our family atmosphere:

Number 1: Start the day by doing stretches, mainly for my back. I take a few minutes to lie down on the ground and let my back relax. I look out the window and see sky and trees. Looking at nature and concentrating on being quiet calms me right down.

Number 2: Exercise! I am on my treadmill 5 days a week, watching reality TV and catching up on news. This is my time and I can’t do without it. Sometimes I talk to family and friends on the phone while I’m walking, and other times, I just kind of zone out. I’ve added weights to my routine and I like how that’s making me feel, too.

Number 3: Read at lunchtime, and anytime I can. This might sound very anti-social, but lunchtime is my time, unless I’m out with friends or family. I think I associate reading at lunch with the days when my kids would nap and that was my only free time. Reading is so important to me that anytime I feel stressed, it’s the number one thing I want to do! Continue reading →

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3 Things I Know For Sure About My Anxiety Journey

~ sweetlifestyle ~ 6 Comments

As someone who suffers from anxiety on a regular basis, I’ve noticed there are three things that have been consistently true about this mental illness: each anxiety journey is personal, it changes over time, and talking about it helps.

When I shared my personal anxiety journey with you in a post on Bell Let’s Talk Day, I mentioned that I would post more on living with anxiety. I have a lot to share.

Anxiety is a personal journey

The first point I’ve noticed about anxiety is that it’s a personal journey.

As the stigma around mental illness is slowly being lifted, more and more people are talking about having anxiety, and no two stories are alike. This was a big a-ha moment for me, because when people would open up to me, I wanted to help. I know what it is to suffer, and I want to share my experience. But, you can’t really give advice to someone else because of the nuanced thoughts and behaviors around each person’s experience.

Each anxiety journey is unique. I took two Cognitive Behavior Therapy classes, which worked really well for me, and it was in the second one that the mental health professional would specifically remind us not to say ‘you should do x, y, or z’ to anyone. We had to use words like ‘for me, this worked’ or ‘I found this helpful in this situation’. At first that bothered me because I had to check myself a lot, but I soon understood. Each person’s story was completely different.

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Finally Feeling Like It’s Okay To Talk About My Anxiety Journey

~ sweetlifestyle ~ 14 Comments

(Originally published on January 31, 2018)

It’s Bell Let’s Talk Day today in Canada and, although I’ve struggled with anxiety for over 25 years, I’m finally feeling like it’s okay to talk about my journey. Bringing attention to mental illness is not something that comes easily for me because I’ve often worried about being judged by my anxiety. It’s probably a function of my age (I went to school in the 1900s, as my daughter likes to say) and a function of how others around me have told me to behave and (not) talk about my anxiety. I can’t blame my parents for telling me to keep quiet about my feelings when I was a young adult, when the real effects of having anxiety began to surface for me. It just wasn’t talked about if you wanted people to think you were normal.

So, I talked about my anxiety to my close friends, who were there for me as I dealt with a specific problem. Outside of the situation, we didn’t talk about what was happening in my mind, for two reasons. One, I didn’t really know there was a term for it because I tended to have mainly trigger-based anxiety and, when I wasn’t anxious, I was generally fine. Two, I was too busy to sit down and think a lot about anxiety as a topic and as a treatable illness – I had to finish school, get a job, move on with my life. My friends and I didn’t talk about mental illness as a subject or what I was going to do about my anxiety. We dealt with the current crisis and symptoms, and moved on. As long as I was busy, I could keep my anxiety at bay.

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