Life with Pots-Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (NANOWRIMO2019)

Stress

Stress I think is one of the worst things for POTS symptoms. I've read that many POTS patients develop anxiety as a side effect of not knowing what the heck is going on with them for so freaking long. Then once you have it, you have to figure out a new way of functioning. Right now I want to curl up into a little ball and cry my eyes out. I have a new health issue going on with me that is not major and just found a lump in the neck of one of my kids. Honestly, it's probably benign but there are days I'm like, seriously? 

Personally, I think I have gone through enough. I think having POTS, being sick with bronchitis and having anxiety are all enough. I don't need this extra stress, but yet here it is. Its moments like these I feel like I should incorporate some kind of religious thought into the context of my writing, but I can't. 

I told you, I am on the outs with God right now. Although I told my kids it was a miracle the eggs our neighbors gave us didn't have blood spots. That's a kosher thing. We don't eat eggs with bloodspots. The Torah forbids ingesting blood. The eggs were brown. Brown eggs always have blood spots.

My kids were ecstatic knowing how much God cared for them.

These are things I hope taking positive psychology helps to shine light on for me. You see when things get hard, I have a difficult time seeing the good. And it's not just that, I already went through it with my childhood. 21 years of insane abuse is enough to choke seven camels, six horses, two dogs, a cat and a rat named Milo. Okay I'm trying to be funny. There are many things to be grateful for, just right now...I'm not feeling it. Which apparently according to some religious websites is okay. God can handle your anger, because that means you are still in a relationship with Him...so here I am. 

Here's another term I hate manage your stress...

What the hell does that mean? Okay I know what it means, it means control your reaction to the stressful things in your life. Have you ever met people who freak out over spilled milk and then other people that can sit down and smoke a pipe during a tornado? You should be in between those two. My plate is very full people. At one point one of my kids was diagnosed with a behavioral issues. When that happened it took me a good few months to get out of the mindset of, "he'll grow out of it" and accept that this is the way that he was. We talk a lot now about finding the strength in it, using it as tool rather than a hinderance but I had to change my reactions to his behavior. Instead of freaking out and getting upset every time something happened I had to learn patience and just not reacting. The same applies when you have POTS. Stress will make your symptoms act up, so you have to learn to tell yourself unless things really are falling apart...then you don't need to get as hyped.

And if you're me, you have to learn to respect when the sky is falling and react. I tend to not react, which is a major issue. The week before R got her tonsils out, my grandmother had a health scare and my sister told me she had a cancer scare in the Spring...I was having anxiety attacks left and right and didn't understand why, until R ended up in the hospital with complications from surgery and I told myself, "you're going through a lot right now." And then had a melt down. It felt amazing. Crying is very therapeutic. 

Balance...

The place between rage and serenity. Thanks Professor Xavier.