Today I had therapy in my closet. I’d told the kids they needed to be in their rooms from 10-11, but at 9:58 they were still in the livingroom and I just couldn’t handle the anxiety, so I set myself up in the closet. I’d already been a little anxious about the fact that my mother-in-law shares a wall with us and I face that wall when I’m at my desk, so this alleviated that anxiety too. It worked out okay.
As you can see, it wasn’t a tissue free session. I didn’t expect it to be. My anxiety is through the roof, as evidenced by the multiple blog posts in a day yesterday. My kids are loving playing in the snow/ice and I’m hiding in my closet. If that doesn’t paint a picture, I don’t know what does…
Anyway, I shared with my therapist all the anxiety I’m feeling about the unknown of tomorrow (Junk Luggers) and next week (windows). It all boiled down to not having control. And perfectionism. I want to do it all “right” and I don’t know what that means because I don’t know what is going to happen, so I over think and over plan and as a result I get overwhelmed.
She asked me what would happen if I don’t get it all done. And I didn’t have an answer. That’s another unknown. She asked what the worst thing would be and all I could come up with was that they wouldn’t be able to do the windows. But I also think (and I didn’t think of this at the time, it’s just now coming to me) I’m worried the workers will judge me and my unpreparedness. That they will take one look at my house and think “this woman has no idea how to adult.” I know it’s stupid. Heck, I’m sure they’ve seen worse. Maybe. And even if they do think those things, why does it matter what they think? I’ll never see them again after the job is done.
Perfectionism has also spiraled this into a bigger job than it should have been. I got it into my head that while we are having the Junk people coming to take some things away, we might as well have them take EVERYTHING away, like all the boxes of junk we’ve had stored in the kids’ closets for the entire time we’ve lived in this house. I mean, we haven’t looked in the boxes in 14 years, clearly we don’t need what’s inside. Only, mentioning that to the kids meant they jumped on the “empty the closet” train before any of the other (more important) stuff got done and most of it is my husband’s junk from when he was a kid, so instead of working on either his homework or clearing the junk from his office he sat in the living room going through old memories and NOT getting rid of most of it. And now the living room is a mess of boxes from their closets, which does nothing to prepare for the junk people to come tomorrow.
We also came to the conclusion that I am not sharing enough with my husband. Yes, on Tuesday I told him that I’m feeling a lot of anxiety leading up to all of this, but instead of telling him what I need him to do to help me with the anxiety I just told him that I was making him aware so he would understand when I don’t react well to things the next week or so. What I need to ask him is that he help me make a plan for being ready. Or that he call the window people to confirm what needs to be done in preparation. Because the thought of calling them myself sends my anxiety soaring again. Because (again) I don’t want them to think I’m an idiot that doesn’t have her s**t together.
Crap. I thought this was all generalized anxiety, but I think I just realized it goes back to social anxiety and feeling like I’m going to be judged. Gah! Why didn’t this occur to me while I was in my therapy session? Now I have to wait a week to share and by then I’ll have some new anxiety to talk to her about and I’ll have completely forgotten about this. Ugh!
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