I sometimes wonder if there's such a thing as post-traumatic ANXIETY.
At the beginning of this year, I had a phone call from a mutual friend telling me that this other friend of ours son had died suddenly. Because of the job I do in my church congregation, helping to plan the funeral is part of my responsibility, so I was on hand to help as much as I could. It was hard for the whole family, as you can imagine, but it was particularly hard on Karen, the mother of the boy who had died. At the same time an older gentlemen in our congregation who had been sick for a long time passed, so we had two funerals in three weeks, which was a lot of work and stress, as you can imagine. But, the morning of the older man's funeral, I got another shocking phone call: Karen, the mother of the boy who had died, had passed suddenly too. Three weeks to the day after her son, she died of flu complications.
I was in shock, as were many in my circle of friends and family. It was a truly difficult time in my life, and continues to be a great loss for us, now even ten months later.
Here's the thing: ever since these events, I've noticed that whenever someone is late, or hasn't called me, or I haven't heard anything for a while, I begin to fear. My fear is always wrapped up in a phone call coming with bad news, and though I've mostly kept it to myself, so as not to alarm the whole world every time I go into defcon four, I'm wondering if it shouldn't be getting better, all these months later. Just last week I went to my sister's for Thanksgiving. Her husband loves to fish, so he got up relatively early (about 8:30am) and left to go fishing. I was up when he left and he said, "See ya later," not specifying when he would return. Around 11:30, I noticed it had been three hours and he wasn't back. We were all in the midst of food preparation, but I had this nervous thought: what if Bruce died? On Thanksgiving? OMG. I even said, as casually as I could to my sister, "How long is Bruce gone fishing before you start worrying about him?" and she just looked at me with a slightly exaggerated mocking expression when she responded with, "Never!" Literally, two minutes later he walked in, and was totally fine, and had caught no fish.
Granted, they've been married 25 years, and his fishing expeditions are old hat. It's just that they recently moved so that they live right near a river so he can go fishing much more often than he did before. And of course it would never occur to her to worry, because nothing's ever happened to him before.
It doesn't happen to me all the time, and I do happen to be a bit melodramatic, but the worst-case scenario conclusion that I jumped to seems to be the norm for me anymore. It's a little disconcerting, and while I don't feel like I'm out of control, or that negative thoughts pervade my mind, I am noticing it's increased. I'd like to think it's just because of the trauma of this past February, but how do I know what's "normal" anxiety and when I should go back to not thinking thoughts like that at all?
It's all a bit...worrisome.
I was in shock, as were many in my circle of friends and family. It was a truly difficult time in my life, and continues to be a great loss for us, now even ten months later.
Here's the thing: ever since these events, I've noticed that whenever someone is late, or hasn't called me, or I haven't heard anything for a while, I begin to fear. My fear is always wrapped up in a phone call coming with bad news, and though I've mostly kept it to myself, so as not to alarm the whole world every time I go into defcon four, I'm wondering if it shouldn't be getting better, all these months later. Just last week I went to my sister's for Thanksgiving. Her husband loves to fish, so he got up relatively early (about 8:30am) and left to go fishing. I was up when he left and he said, "See ya later," not specifying when he would return. Around 11:30, I noticed it had been three hours and he wasn't back. We were all in the midst of food preparation, but I had this nervous thought: what if Bruce died? On Thanksgiving? OMG. I even said, as casually as I could to my sister, "How long is Bruce gone fishing before you start worrying about him?" and she just looked at me with a slightly exaggerated mocking expression when she responded with, "Never!" Literally, two minutes later he walked in, and was totally fine, and had caught no fish.
Granted, they've been married 25 years, and his fishing expeditions are old hat. It's just that they recently moved so that they live right near a river so he can go fishing much more often than he did before. And of course it would never occur to her to worry, because nothing's ever happened to him before.
It doesn't happen to me all the time, and I do happen to be a bit melodramatic, but the worst-case scenario conclusion that I jumped to seems to be the norm for me anymore. It's a little disconcerting, and while I don't feel like I'm out of control, or that negative thoughts pervade my mind, I am noticing it's increased. I'd like to think it's just because of the trauma of this past February, but how do I know what's "normal" anxiety and when I should go back to not thinking thoughts like that at all?
It's all a bit...worrisome.