My battle with General Anxiety Disorder has been long and inconsistent. For months, I seemed to be winning. Our move to Los Angeles helped in many ways (except driving…because LA drivers are a whole different breed…), and there were parts of our move that eased many burdens in my mental health. The kids and I have so much life available to us here, and we take full advantage of the area. Being outdoors so many hours a day improves my mental stability, and we have so many options for places to go and explore.

Despite all the joy that comes with living here, this school year has been particularly challenging because it’s the first year I have taught more than one grade. Ana Lia and Eliam were so close in academics that I did all their subjects together except for reading. It sounds almost silly to be overwhelmed by teaching two grades when I know so many homeschool moms who teach a variety of grades to far more than three children. Whether logical or not though, it was a big shift for me. Ana Lia and Eliam also now require differentiated instruction in more subjects than reading, so the amount of time it takes to get through everyone’s school work in a day has increased substantially. It works well for the kids because they get built-in breaks while I am working with the other two, but by the time Afa gets home from work, I have been teaching or working since the moment he left. And often, despite working all the hours, I rarely finished all our school and all my work. It was a new type of exhaustion.

Our routine is an important aspect in maintaining my mental health, and one of the most important parts of this routine is the time that I spend in the quiet of the morning. At one point, Finiasi woke up around 6am multiple mornings in a row. This dysregulates me far more than it should, but it does in fact dysregulate me. On the fourth morning, I was trying to make a smoothie for Afa’s breakfast, and the blender started making an awful noise. I immediately turned it off, unplugged it, and began to have a full meltdown on the kitchen floor. I couldn’t remember having done anything differently, but I had somehow broken our (unreasonably expensive) blender.

Afa quickly figured out I had left a spoon in the blender, creating the awful noises but not breaking it. The blender still worked the way it was supposed to, but in such a heightened emotional state, I couldn’t process the fact that everything was okay. The stress that had been accumulating over the previous week erupted in uncontrollable tears and thoughts of how I break everything I touch and cannot do anything right. Everything had been okay only moments before, and then I convinced myself that the world was ending and I didn’t deserve any good things, including my husband and kids.

A few weeks later, I was supposed to meet some friends for a Bible study after work. Afa and the kids had to come with me because we all were going to church afterwards. I asked everyone else to meet me at a park so that the kids could play. I’ve never been very good at spatial reasoning, and learning my way around new places is especially challenging. I knew there was a park with plenty of parking, seating, and shade (all premiums in LA), and I sent the address to my friends. Unsurprisingly, I sent them an address for a park that was only about 7 minutes from the one I thought it was, but this one had no parking, only 1 picnic table, and a little shade. 

We were already running late before we arrived, a fact about which I had been working to rein in my anxiety since we left the house. I made the whole trip, knowing we would be ten minutes late, without any annoyance at all. I read part of our read-aloud to the kids, and we discussed some of the character decisions and the battle descriptions. When we arrived and couldn’t see anyone, I mapped the address I sent everyone only to see that I was in the wrong place. 

At that moment, I lost all sense of control. I screamed (in the middle of the park) and got back into the van, crying and infuriated. During tantrums like these, I start thinking horrible things like, “I’m so stupid,” “why can’t I do anything right,” “I mess everything up,” “I can’t even read a simple map.” This time my thoughts escalated even further as I thought that I deserved to be in pain. I had thoughts of self-harm, which almost felt comforting in the moment but were incredibly alarming when I managed to calm down. Afa patiently took me to the park with the address I had sent everyone, no one was upset with me…at all. In fact, the following week when we were going to get together again, they suggested we meet at the same park.

As these two examples clearly demonstrate, my brain struggles to tell the difference between actual danger and perceived danger. When I am not practicing good mental health habits, I’m not able to face this danger head on; rather, I crumple into a mess of inability. In the weeks leading up to these incidents, I had been actively ignoring important mental health habits. I had also been trying to “power through” challenges instead of seeking support through them. 

Good mental health habits for me include regular exercise, eating healthy food, and sleeping regularly. I had not been getting enough exercise to work off the anxious energy that accrued in my body. My anxiety is always lower if I go for a run 3-4 times each week. (This personal experience was recently supported by a medical study on exercise and mental health.) It provides me with time to process all the thoughts swirling in my mind and take those thoughts captive. In addition to these three top habits, getting a few hours alone in the morning and a few hours in the sunshine in the afternoon also helps me maintain a more accurate perspective when my brain tells me that I am in “danger.” 

However, even implementing all these habits that make a huge difference, I’m never going to be able to do all this on my own. This is one of my favorite soap boxes, but we were not designed to have parents and kids as an isolated nuclear family. We were designed to live in tribes, social creations meant to be supporting one another in various endeavors. Western society has set it up so that two parents have the same responsibilities that approximately 30 adults used to share. One of the most important steps I can take during times when my anxiety is overwhelming my life is to ask for help.

There are certainly different ways of doing this, but I have found that asking for specific help has been most effective. After these world class meltdowns, my husband could clearly see that I was not doing well. We sat down to talk, and my very specific request was that he take the kids for a little while when he got home from work. There are days when that might only be 20 minutes for me to decompress before we head out to our evening plans, and there are other days when he takes them to the park for a few hours before dinner. What I have learned is that the amount of time is less important than the opportunity to sit in silence after a day full of constant in person and virtual interaction.

Remembering moments like the two examples I provided can be embarrassing and disconcerting, but I try to also remember the lessons around them. I am privileged to have such an incredible support system around me, and it’s so important that I use that support system in these times – and then provide similar support to friends who need it at other times.