Progress. It looks different for everyone. For a runner, progress looks like shaving 3 minutes off their previous race time. For a someone in business maybe it's that the bottom line is a few dollars higher than last year's. For a student maybe it's a few points higher on their dreaded math exam. For a woman in labor a few centimeters is HUGE progress. For me, progress is a deep breath. Simple right? Not in the middle of an attack its not. (For more on why check out the Panic Attack link above)
For whatever reason crowded rooms get the best of me right now. I think it's the sensory overload that I'm sensitive to. People talking at once, dishes clanging, smells permeating, waiter moving in a blur. Being in a restaurant makes use of all of the senses. I used to love that. I felt so alive in a big crowd in packed restaurant. Good food, good company, music, madness.... But yesterday my pulse kicked, my breathing got shallow, the world got dizzy. I can't even tell you what I ate, much less if it was any good. All I could think about was escape. I had had a week of near nothing as far as anxiety, so to have it come creep quietly back in an environment I was used to enjoying felt like defeat. But a funny thing happened on the way to therapy...
She told me that was progress. Uhhh, okay, sure. Work function, food, freak out...all part of the normal day. Maybe, but that's not what I WANT my day to look like. I don't WANT that to be progress. "What DO you want it to look like then?", she asked
Good question. I guess back to the way I was before all this started. I might have dealt with depression but at least I could run, I could eat in a restaurant, I could drive without thinking about it. But that would mean going backwards, right?
A 15 year-old with dreams of the NFL may see the draft as progress, but he's got a few steps in between before he can get there. Making his varsity team, becoming a starter, scholarship to a good school, etc. I keep looking at this like a sprint. I want to fast forward through all the work and end up the healthy girl I sometimes still get glimpses of. But if the 15-year-old was put on the NFL teams of his dream just because he wished it, he'd likely find himself flattened to the turf before he had a change to take in the scenery. Point A to Point B requires a few steps in between. Skip them, or get there too easily and you might miss the point of the journey.
Progress for me was the fact that instead of letting the panic take over I took a deep breath, then another, then another. It didn't make it all better, but it kept it from getting worse. My day went on, more or less as planned. The therapist says that's progress. I don't really feel that yet, but maybe I will, maybe that, in and of itself, will be...progress.
