50 and beyond

I had my first panic attack when I turned 40. It happened while I was driving and I suddenly experienced a spasm in my chest area. I wondered if it was some sort of heart attack, but I didn’t have difficulty breathing. It just felt like my heart was being wrung.

I observed that after the first anxiety attack, the subsequent anxiety pangs get triggered by events that are less and less traumatic in magnitude. Moreover, the symptoms lasted longer, up to two weeks once. It is very uncomfortable to feel your heart palpitating even when you are at rest. I used to try and get rid of the feeling by exercising more to get my actual heart rate to “sync” with the palpitations I was experiencing, so that it could perhaps make it feel more normal physiologically.​

My mom is very vocal in expressing her displeasure when she is unhappy. My childhood is why I am generally people pleasing and conflict avoidant.

I am much more in control of my emotions nowadays. Reading the book Boundaries by Henry Cloud helped. I felt a great relief just knowing that I was not alone in the way I felt. When I first read the book some years back, I felt that I would never be able to draw boundaries with my mom. I learnt to accept that if she was unhappy with me, it was not my fault. I also saw that I had a warped idea of what a “peacemaker” and what “a good daughter” ought to be. And so, I started taking baby steps to set up boundaries.

Last week, I made my mom come and live with me. I had been trying to get her to do so for years but she’s fiercely independent and always refused. I have been concerned about her living alone and refusing to get help of any sorts in cleaning her apartment. Finally, last week, I just brought her over and acted like her moving in was a done deal.

She protested mildly over the course of the week, but I just kept postponing her request to return to her home.

After staying with me for one week, my mom made one final attempt to insist on returning home. We tried to distract her with the usual “we’ll send you back tomorrow because it’s so late already” but she was bent on having her way. So, we had to drive her home.

I now feel half relieved that she is back at her home, and half concerned that she will not be able to manage on her own. But I do know that she was assertive and demanding enough to hold her ground; after all, she was able to make Hubby drive her home🤭. Looks like we will have to wait till she gets more frail before we can make her come and stay with us more permanently.

From her one week stay with me, I learnt some things about managing my emotions from this past week​ of her staying with me:

I am better able to manage my emotions now. I did get exhausted managing the stress of handling her but I didn’t feel the sense of helplessness I usually do. My heart didn’t palpitate in a way that caused too much discomfort. When I felt the onset of helplessness, I tried to step out of my emotions and assess the situation as though I was another person observing myself.

Well, I guess that was the dry run. I wonder how the real race is gonna be like.