I don't need new issues, I have old ones

Isolating has never really been one of my bigger issues. When I am struggling or something, I talk about it with friends, or I compartmentalize it, possibly never to be heard from again. I am far too social for me to consider isolation. Who will I make sarcastic comments to if I am isolating? It’s just not an efficient use of my humor. I have several friends who when they are going through stuff they isolate completely and don’t have any communication outside of the bare minimum with those in their world. I haven’t ever fully understood it until lately. I feel like I am slowly pulling back more and more and going deeper inside of myself. I have had increased anxiety lately and I am not exactly sure why, but I think that in response to it I have truly begun to isolate. It amazes me just how distracting anxiety can be. I am one of those types of people that if I am sitting too long without doing about 8 things at once, then I must be asleep. I am not one to get lost in my thoughts, which comes from the whole compartmentalization thing, if I think about it then I have to process/deal with it. Meh, I’d rather not, thus I tuck it away (and this is a constant struggle to not do this as I know good and well it isn’t a healthy behavior, it’s not always a given). Lately though I have found myself able to pass significant amounts of time just zoning, and doing nothing else. My anxiety will reach a climax and I will almost have to sit there, stare at a wall and just go over everything in my mind to try and diffuse the extra (and often unwelcome) rushes of adrenaline. The other day I was running, which is an awesome anxiety reliever by the way, and normally the only way I get through my run is by reading the whole time. I am able to set page goals for myself, and pass the time that way, (again, can’t ever just do one thing), but the other night I ran my entire run just staring at a point on the wall and thinking about stuff, not reading more than five pages. WTF?! That doesn’t happen to me…ever.

I haven’t talked to people like I normally do; not nearly as much texts, emails, phone calls, never mind personal face to face contact. It isn’t as though I haven’t wanted to, but I feel almost immobilized when I try to. I feel like I have so much going on inside my head but not really knowing what it is that how can I talk to people about what is going on? So I find myself pulling back, and when I do make contact, I feel totally disconnected from who I am talking to. I answer in vague generalities, again, not in an attempt to hide anything or be dishonest, but just because I don’t really know what is going on. Are new things trying to come to the surface to be looked at and dealt with? are old things trying to resurface and I am just not doing a good job of using the tools I have to deal with them? I really don’t know, but what doesn’t help is how sucky I feel as a friend, wife, daughter, sister, sister-in-law, youth leader, church member, counselor…the list of additional reasons to feel guilty just goes on. And what makes me feel better? Not much, I guess. Running helps, I am just lucky that is one thing I am not compulsive about or I might have another problem on my hands. Luckily my inherent laziness and lack of desire to push myself comes into play to balance it out. Talking does help, but therein lies the problem, isolation and sharing don’t really work cohesively. It is weird though, I don’t feel lonely, I don’t feel all alone in this world, I happen to know I have many people who are more than willing to listen and offer anything I need, so it’s not like I feel depressed, alone, sad etc. it is more the absence of any feeling other than anxiety, the complete disconnect that I feel that is causing my isolation problem.

Sigh. So what now? When will it go away? What do I need to do to make it go away? How can I keep it from leading to triggering all my myriad other issues? Well, frick, if I had all these answers I wouldn’t be needing to write this out and try and figure it out! Silly me. So I will keep trying to figure it out, deal with it, and push my way through it. I apologize for those of you who are affected by it, I promise it’s just temporary…at least I hope so.