Stress Center Peer Support

This week I thought that I had triumphed in a number of ways. I played 18 holes of golf at the parish outing, drove 4 1/2 hours to a friends' cottage alone, and back, and did normal work at the two parishes I have.

Today I feel very anxious and have a lot of reflux and generalied anxiety. Is it common to have the body react in this way? It's been normally pretty good - been working with this for over 20 years. Did the program a few years ago and want to focus on these things if I can.

Any comments and suggestions would be helpful.

Bob Shafer

Bob...I don't know whether it's "normal" or not, but it sure is what I've experienced! I will do really well for one or two days and then have a really bad day. You seem to be experiencing that same thing. If you'd like you can read a little about my experiences on my blog. http://jwalkergs.wordpress.com/

I hope you continue to progress in your journey through this!!

Bob and Jason -

I also experience something similar. For me, it can even happen in the span of a few hours. For example, I might be very anxious about a short drive somewhere. But when I actually make the trip, the anxiety isn't all that bad and I make it back just fine. However, when I get back to my comfort zone, I then start panicking.

It can also happen as you both describe, where I have a few good days followed by a crash. A typical example for me is when my parents (my "safe" people) go out of town for a weekend. While I struggle a bit more, I ultimately do just fine. But when they get home, I suddenly experience I great deal of anxiety.

I don't know if this is the case for you, but for me I think the source of the "rebound anxiety" is my finally letting my guard down. I get all prepared for the worst, put up my defenses, and then do fairly well. Afterward, I start to relax and let down my shield. It's then that the anxiety pounces, as if it were aware of my vulnerability.

I suppose that the message I'm trying to communicate is that I think we only have so much energy we can put into fighting anxiety, whether we're aware of it or not. At some point, we let go and it's then that were become more vulnerable to anxiety and panic. I don't have any hard evidence for this, but it makes sense to me and gives me some comfort knowing that there's a reason for my bad days, which means there's a solution too.

Jamie