So hi. I'm an anxious ogre. I'm going to do a candid personal entry about my anxiety and my growing understanding about anxiety in the hopes that it will help me understand it and maybe in the hopes that this will reach someone who also deals with similar issues. Maybe. Part of me (the anxious part of me, probably. I do a lot of asides, don't I?) hopes no one will ever find this. But, you know, if you did find yourself here, welcome. These are my confessions.
Did anyone else start singing the following Usher song to themselves when I said that?
This leads me to my semi-current situation. I say "semi-current" because I'm better than I was, and I'd like to think I'm on the road to recovery rather than on a loop of pain and disappointment. I'll check back in with you on that at a later point in time maybe. I've promised you a lot already. Anyway, a few weeks ago my jaw started clicking when I ate. Or drank. Or just tried to move. This started to hurt. Then my jaw started to get stiff. Like really stiff. Like I couldn't open my mouth stiff. Also there was pain down the right side of my face that would not go away.
All of this because I don't know how to freaking relax. Or just let go. All of this because I've been so damn obsessed with my teeth all summer.
"Why are you so obsessed with your teeth, anxious ogre?" those of you who are still here ask me. I will give you my professional opinion. Well, as a professional observer of the world. It has been my observation from my behavior and from the behavior of other near and dear to me that when we are stressed, worried, and/or upset about things in our lives that we cannot control that we (meaning people like me and the people I've observed that are liked me. If this doesn't include you, that's fine) often fixate on things that we have more control over. Sometimes that leads to eating disorders. Or maybe over-exercising. Or constantly cleaning (why why WHY can't I be a person who cleans when I get anxious?). For me (at least this time), my anxiety lead to me clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth to the point that I lost complete functionality of my mouth for a few days. Hooray.
I've said over and over again at this point that I'm an anxious person, but I haven't really said what I'm anxious about. Here are some things that give me anxiety on a regular basis: crowds, driving, talking on the phone, money, meeting new people. I think most of these are issues that everyone has a bit of anxiety about to some degree? But some (really incredible) people are able to handle these every day stressors in healthy ways.
I, on the other hand, have a history of taking this anxiety out on my body (not on purpose). For instance, when I was an undergraduate, there were times when I found myself sitting in the midst of my Shakespeare class realizing I'd forgotten to breathe. Don't ask me why it was Shakespeare. I love Shakespeare and that was a great class. But it just was that class, okay? I remember it vividly. I also get really awful tension headaches. Sometimes during extreme times of stress, I've been known to get stomach aches for days on end.
This teeth thing isn't entirely new. I've been known to grind my teeth at night and sometimes even during the day. But this is the first time that I've actually hurt my jaw doing it. I did some snooping around on the Internet, and apparently this is not an uncommon thing. Some people deal with it for years without relief. Ack. Not good news.
So right now is a time in my life that I would label as an "extreme time of stress," to quote myself from earlier in this same damn post. I am getting ready to move to a new town in a few weeks to start a PhD program. Those of you who read my last post might remember that my brother is battling leukemia (AML) currently. I donated stem cells to him in May, and now we're waiting around to see if the new cells take or if his body rejects them. Don't ask me to get more technical than that. Doctors and medical "stuff" are other things I get unreasonably anxious about. But anyway, so far so good, but we have about fifty more days of being in the danger zone. It's a nerve-wracking time for everyone in our family, and I feel all the more nervous and anxious because I know I have to leave him soon.
I told all of this to my dentist today. She's got big beautiful white teeth and perfectly straight platinum blonde hair (for real), and her brow furrowed with concern as I explained my situation while nearly crying in the dentist office (surprisingly - not a first for me . . . maybe not so surprising). Obviously, I need a therapist right now, not a dentist. Then I told her about what I'd been doing to force my jaw to relax: I gave in and started wearing the so so sexy mouth guard I'm meant to wear to bed every night, I took handfuls of Ibuprofen, put a cold pack on my face, downloaded a meditation app on my iPhone (they also aren't paying me. I'm sure an Android would work just as well), and I am planning on getting back on whatever anti-anxiety medication my doctor prescribes for me whenever I go to visit her later this week.
The dentist/model said all of this sounded like the right thing to do and that I should keep up the good work. She also said I should start doing yoga regularly, even if I think it's a lame waste of time (which I do in some ways and don't in other ways . . . perhaps I'll explain in another post). Then she massaged my jaw line for several minutes as it appeared that I had several knots on the right side of my face (so I needed a masseuse and a therapist rather than a dentist), and then she sent me on my way.
From here, I guess we'll just see how it goes. Perhaps regular therapy appointments and face massages are in my future. I have yet to find a meditation app that I feel good about recommending, but maybe I'll do a little post about some of the ones I've tried and why I hate them all thus far. Wouldn't that be fun?
Until then, a reminder for myself and those like me: When you can't control the outcome of situations, sometimes the best thing to do is to stop worrying about it all together (this is my dad's advice). Also: don't forget to breathe, even in Shakespeare class.