{"id":256,"date":"2015-10-07T11:52:54","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T11:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/solosurvior.com\/?p=256"},"modified":"2015-10-07T11:52:54","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T11:52:54","slug":"ups-and-downs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/solosurvior.com\/?p=256","title":{"rendered":"Ups and downs…"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>These past few weeks have been very mixed \u2013 lots of highs and lows. It started when there were 3 bomb scares – 2 of them near my office in the city and one on route to the city from my office in Subiaco. Fortunately I was working from home that day – as I do once a week to help me better manage my stress<\/p>\n

I was in quite a state to say the least. With many tears, I could not face the thought of going into the city the next day. I had meetings I had to attend and not showing up was not an option if I wanted to keep my job. I felt like such a wimp and that I should not be reacting this way but these kinds of things are way up there – about 9 or 10 – on my stress meter<\/p>\n

I have narrowly missed bombs a few times in my life – at least 4 occasions – the closest one being when I was at the movies and the movie house next to mine was bombed. My place of work was bombed – thankfully we were not there at the time. So as much progress as I have made over the last past 10 months, these events put me back in a state of high alert<\/p>\n

My therapist said she would be surprised if I had not reacted and gave me a safe space to deal with the emotion. She has reinforced my mindfulness exercises and gave me something to consider going forward. I am so grateful for the wisdom she passes on to me. It took much prayer and encouragement to get me back to work and the city in particular \u2013 but I did it. I felt pathetic that some friends and family were congratulating me and saying \u2018well done\u2019 for going to work but appreciate that they understand that, for me, it was an achievement<\/p>\n

A year ago I stepped down from leading the singing in church. I was having panic attacks some days in church and could never predict when one might hit. This past week, I led again. I was terrified but used some of the tools I have been given to calm down and continue. It may take a while for me to feel comfortable but it\u2019s progress<\/p>\n

I know I just have to get up more times than I fall down. I am learning how to take care of me, and to have time-outs in my day to get perspective back; to take slow deep\u00a0breaths; to change my thoughts.\u00a0I am exceedingly thankful for the people I have in my life who help in this journey – I feel like I don’t deserve some of them but am glad for the part they play in my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These past few weeks have been very mixed \u2013 lots of highs and lows. It started when there were 3 bomb scares – 2 of them near my office in the city and one on route to the city from…
Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ptsd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/solosurvior.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/solosurvior.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/solosurvior.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solosurvior.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solosurvior.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/solosurvior.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"https:\/\/solosurvior.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/solosurvior.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solosurvior.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solosurvior.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}