It’s been a while since my last blog post… I really have no reason to not be posting, I’m at home basically all day EVERY day so it’s definitely not due yo lack of time. I just haven’t been very motivated to do it and tend to just do whatever will keep my mind busy for the day so I don’t stress and worry about all things COVID. But, now with numbers going own in my area as well as me being fully vaccinated and my family well on their way to being fully vaccinated my anxiety has lessened a bit and I want to get back to writing more.
Since my last post there have been some changes to my MS which I will get into in my next post. For now I’m going to talk about COVID anxiety and how it’s affected me over the last year……
About 10 months ago I went to my family Dr. (Family Drs are a whole other blog post, look for it in coming weeks) to discuss some anxiety I was having. It was the type of anxiety that would keep me awake ALL night, and leave me stressed ALL day.
The things I am anxious about vary from day to day, and not all of it is about COVID but a lot of it is. Not necessarily in the way you might think though.
Yes, getting sick makes me nervous but that’s not the bulk of my anxiety.
My anxiety is coming from family and the people around me who think this last year has been nothing but a joke, and that following the rules makes me a sheep.
My anxiety comes from having told/asked family and friends for the past 4 years to please respect my health and stay away from me when sick and them not listening. It literally took a global pandemic for people to realize I was serious. (I should also add that long before I was ever diagnosed with MS and was expected somewhere and happened to not feel well I would call whoever I was supposed to be with and give them the option to be around me while ill or not. I thought it was common courtesy….I guess not)
My anxiety comes from my husband going to work and knowing that people he works with are being unsafe and then in close contact with him.
My anxiety comes from having to tell my boys “no” because it’s the safe (and legal) choice while the people around them are going on with life normally.
My anxiety comes from family supporting anti-COVID and anti-mask rallies and then expecting to be a part of or lives like nothing is wrong.
My anxiety comes from people thinking that my mental health doesn’t matter as much as those that are defying regulations in the name of “mental health” …..I feel I should explain this one a bit. At the beginning of the pandemic we were encouraged to look the other way if someone wasn’t exactly following guidelines because “you never know what someone else is dealing with” and maybe they just needed to be around people to feel better. That’s 100% fine with me. However when I reached out saying that people close to me defying regulations was affecting my mental health I was laughed at and called a sheep.
**Side note** even typing this is making me anxious 😬
I could give you many more anxiety inducing situations but, I’m sure I’ve already pissed several people off with just the examples I’ve given so far.
So, what do I do about this anxiety?! Well my Dr has prescribed an anti anxiety med for me that I take daily, my husband has gotten better about hearing me out rather than just dismissing my worries (he used to just tell me that it would be ok without really paying attention to what the worry was), and before going into anything we make a plan as a family.
For example, my family and I have been discussing our summer plans and how we want summer to look for us. My boys want to be able to spend time with their friends, we all want to go camping, and I just want to get outside more.
For this summer to be everything we all want we have some plans….some are easier to execute than others though.
For my boys and their friends we’ve basically got that figured out. Each of my boys have 1 really good friend, both of which have been being cautious this last year and have been following guidelines, as well as my older son’s girlfriend who has also been extra careful. For this situation we’re basically following school guidelines (if feeling unwell stay home)
For the getting outside more I just need to do it…. My reason/excuse for not is because I always feel guilty asking for help to load/unload my power scooter. Now that it’s nicer weather out I hope to actually start going for small walks on my own around my neighbourhood.
Now for the camping….normally we camp with both sides of our family a couple of times each summer, and last year was no exception. To do this my husband and I let our families know what we were comfortable with and asked our families what they thought. We explained that if they thought out requests (we were following AHS guidelines at the time. No shared food, washing hands, not sitting too close to other households) were too much to let us know and we would not participate and would find something else for our family to do. While everyone technically agreed there was definitely tension among everyone else and us. I was very often made to feel like this was all be done for me and ONLY me🙄
We do plan to camp with both sides of our family again this year but will be asking everyone to follow the same guidelines as last summer. The reason for this is like I said before we have family from both sides that have blatantly ignored COVID restrictions and this is what we feel is safest for us. In our opinion the only other solution is to completely avoid those people and the people around them until COVID is basically gone. Yes, I know it will always be here but hopefully with enough people doing the right thing it will be far less of a problem.
**Yup, still feeling anxious **
My hope is that I continue to manage my anxiety as well as I am now and that my family and I have enjoyable summer however that looks!