Does Your Blood Pressure Vary Due to Anxiety?

I am in the process of adjusting my blood pressure medicine. This has been on-going since about February of this year. I have been tracking my readings for about 7 to 8 months.

The trouble is my blood pressure varies widely over the course of the day I think due to the stress and anxiety and erratic nature of my bipolar illness. Also if I go to an appointment that is stressful like the dentist or for a mammogram, my stress level soars and my blood pressure climbs.

My dental hygienist indicated yesterday there is something called “white coat syndrome” where your blood pressure rises upon seeing someone in the medical establishment (doctor or dentist or someone in that profession) wearing a “white coat.” When I first arrived for my dental cleaning yesterday, my blood pressure levels were very high. I asked again at the end of the appointment whether my levels could be checked again — and they were normal.

Does anyone else have volatile blood pressure readings? That might be tied to anxiety levels? Or suffer from high blood pressure readings when stress is high?

Various Interventions for Stress?

Plans to take my daughter to college next week are leaving me stressed with a capital S. I have scheduled an extra appointment with my therapist for tomorrow. I have gone up a little on my Clozapine. Perhaps not enough…? Everything feels very stressful. Making plans for wisdom teeth removal in December. Making plans to board the dog. Consider changing meds – this will be held off until September. Making sure my daughter is OK during move-in. Friends and family say this stress is normal when sending a child off to college. OK so it’s normal. Why do I feel so un-normal?

I have been taught not to be afraid to ask for what you need….. I am asking now for your understanding and support. The more “yeah it’s normal” s I get the better I think I will feel. Brother can you spare a dime? Or a least a word of support that this too will pass?

Do you experience inertia surrounding your to-do list for the day?

There are days when I feel like getting things done and there are days when I don’t really feel up to doing much. This post is about the days when I don’t feel like doing much of anything.

I am a planner so I always have a list of things to get done each day more or less. Some days are busier than others. Some days are more motivated than others. This post is about the days that I don’t feel particularly motivated and/or may also feel that I am just not up to the task of going to the grocery or fixing a home-cooked meal that day.

So I am assuming we all know what inertia looks like on those days when the to-do list is not a source of help for organizing the day. Inertia looks like: I don’t feel like doing anything other than the most rudimentary things like caring for the dog or taking a bath or shower and maybe not even these items. Additional items on the to-do list are just more a source of stress than anything else. It is as if there is a pile-up accident on the highway up ahead and I am just caught in a huge traffic snarl and cannot get through the pile-up of vehicles (to-do items) up ahead on the highway. In other words, I just don’t feel like getting things done.

So what is it that can help with all this inertia and being caught in a multi-car pile-up (metaphorically speaking)? I have found that there is not a cure for this inertia. It rears its ugly head from time to time and does not truly disappear. I am certain it is a by-product of depression associated with my bipolar condition. But there are some ways of managing this inertia or countering it.

I find that if I can muster the energy to do just one small thing on my to-do list for the day like the simple act of emptying the dishwasher, I am all of a sudden ready to tackle another thing that is important but may or may not be on my to-do list for that day. And the trend continues to a third or maybe even fourth item on the list (or off). The key appears to be true to the idea of inertia. If I set my body in motion (by acting on the dishwasher) I have a tendency to keep moving forward (by either doing another item on my to-do list or some other task that may be equally important).

This also means being flexible with the items on my to-do list. I may be motivated to do items not on that list and need to be aware that doing these items is progress even if those items are not on the original list for the day.

Inertia exists in both directions. A body will stay at rest if it is put to rest. A body will be set in motion if there is movement. This idea of setting a body in motion really helps me get over the hump in my day and move onto the next item on my to-do list. It is a matter of changing the force of inertia for the day from a resting place to a movement place.

For example, I did not feel like doing much today and did not feel like going to the grocery store at all. I was able to get the dishwasher unloaded and felt afterward good about writing this blogpost and did. In the meantime my husband went for a short grocery run and I was somehow able to plan and prep for a nice home-cooked meal of marinated salmon steaks, couscous and cabbage. My day went from standstill to pretty busy and fairly fulfilling.

Does this inertia metaphor ring true for anyone else? What helps you to pick up your to-do items when you are not motivated to do so?

I Wonder

This afternoon I have had a strange thought. What if I were to visualize all the times I have been anxious about something (like in a bar graph) and compare that with the number of occasions that something that I was anxious about really occurred.

I have not done this exercise before, but I would guess every day I have an anxiety bar graph of at least a 5 or 6 or 7 or an 8 on a scale of one to ten (ten being the worst). I would also bet that there is a one in fifty chance that something I was/am concerned about will present itself as a reality. And that reality if it presents would probably be a one or a two on that same scale from one to ten.

By choosing to create a numeric or visual graph of my anxiety, I am not trying to minimize the anxiety I experience at all, because it can be quite debilitating. What I am trying to do is give myself a visual of how severe the anxiety is as contrasted with whether that anxiety I experience is ever tied with an actual anxiety-premeditated outcome.

I guess you could say I am trying to rationalize my anxiety and put it into perspective in terms of how often the incident I am worried about actually occurs. I hope the result will be that I am able to talk down myself from a high anxiety event by recalling how many times my anxiety is NOT tied with an actual stress induced event. Ie. I would like to keep myself honest as to what percent of the time that I am worried actually results in a prior perceived stress event.

Just out of curiosity, what techniques do you use to talk yourself out of anxiety? Is that working for you? What else is important to consider in trying to mitigate your anxious feelings?

If I can do it, you can do it!

I recently have gotten back into a physical exercise regime, what I have not done for about 15 to 18 years. I have been keeping a log of my walks and my yoga. So far it has been five weeks since I started. I have kept the log each day and include any comments like what yoga positions were difficult (code for I could not complete….) or whether the walk was long or short. I also include a day of rest each week.

In my prior life, I was an exercise fanatic, sometimes going on runs twice a day. Later after running I was an aerobics enthusiast and actually taught classes in college and later after I graduated in clubs. Later in life but still before meeting my husband, I was a self-taught dancer. I always considered myself to be very fit, but after my lovely daughter was born, I slipped into a not-so-fit lifestyle. I gave up on exercise and succumbed to the idea that meds cause weight gain.

I also succumbed to stress eating and snacking particularly at night before bed. This is not good for weight control and not so good for being at risk for Type II diabetes either.

I share my recent success with getting into a yoga and walk routine because I am proud to say this is the longest duration in forever that I have kept up such an exercise regime. I also want you to know that if you are on the fence about exercising, motivation can happen for you! If it happened for me, it can surely happen for you, too!

I am also proud to report that I have lost ten pounds and have kept it off over the last two to three months. I still am having my evening treat which I hope soon to discontinue or to substitute with a price of fruit. While ten pounds off is a good initial accomplishment for me, I would like to update that goal with an additional ten pounds more to lose. We’ll see if that’s doable.

Although I have known about the connection between exercise and stress management all my life, I still have been somehow unwilling to get back into the routine of things. This last month has reminded me how crucial exercise is to helping with mental health — especially anxiety management which is one of my biggest challenges.

I keep a basic log in WORD and write down a daily account of my walks and my yoga. I write down what was particularly difficult in yoga and what I did as an alternative pose. There is no room for judgement or for feeling bad if I cannot do a certain pose. I simply do what I can and modify the pose if it is too difficult for me. Whether I complete the class doing all the work or some of the work, I still benefit from a good bit of stress and anxiety reduction.

Anyway, I wanted to share my start back to a successful exercise schedule. Hopefully this will help keep me motivated. Also, I hope if you too are experiencing trouble getting going in this area, you will use the idea of my simple log to help you start your version of the same sort of regimen.

Understanding triggers for yourself and your spouse

It goes without saying that everyone should be aware of their own triggers so as to have proper boundaries with the people in their life. This might include their spouse, a clinician, or perhaps a person in the grocery store. Once we know our own triggers, we can better avoid situations with these triggers as well as adopt behaviors that help manage through the triggers if they are unavoidable.

But what I am proposing here today is not only to know your own triggers but also be aware of those triggers for your spouse (or your best friend). Invariably about three times a year, my husband’s trigger gets tripped. This is often surrounding planning for / taking a car trip for a week to ten days. Or it may have to do with some investment issue or mechanical mishap gone awry – usually something simple. My husband tends to sweat the small stuff but let the big problems roll off his back.

Understanding what triggers my husband is as important to me as understanding what triggers me. When he is under stress he tends to use a tone of voice that is not pleasant to me. For a while in the earlier stages of our relationship I would try to counter that tone of voice in a way that escalated the conflict. I would just mimic back the escalated tone which never resolved anything and only made things worse.

What I have been doing for the last several years of our marriage or so is just going silent if he is in a triggered space. Not reacting. Not engaging. Another thing I do is to let him know I cannot process the information he is communicating to me when he is using that tone. Both of those tactics seem to work better than the escalation scenario.

Another thing I have been doing lately is verbally acknowledging him when I know he is in a stressful place. From time to time, I do talk him down from getting to that trigger in the first place. If we are unable to manage through a trigger zone successfully, I ask for an apology and he gives one.

On the other side of the coin, when I am triggered in my anxiety spot which is almost once a day for a half hour, my husband uses humor to deescalate me. If I am worried about losing the keys, he might say that he threw them out the window or some such joke. If I am worried about the car windows being open, he says he rolled them all down before it started to rain.

I am not sure this is ideal behavior for a couple but it seems to work for us. I understand his trigger areas and largely seek to avoid or deescalate during those times. He understands mine and does his part through humor to let me know my anxiety should not dominate my day or dominate my thoughts.

For the most part, we also go out of the way to thank each other for things we do around the house or to help with the running of the household. We try not to take each other for granted and express gratitude for the times when we are able to manage without impacting each other’s triggers. Part of being thankful is acknowledging that neither of us is perfect and that is OK.

My Sojourn through Bipolar Illness – Being a Working Mom with Bipolar Illness

Being a working Mom continues to be the most difficult part of my journey. I am drawn to high- stress and high-pay jobs as this was generally my track before my daughter was born. However in the last sixteen years I have not been able to work a high paying job for longer than a few months without some sort of bipolar break-through or debilitating anxiety attack. Usually this involves some sort of high anxiety event where I disclose my health issues to my employers who are invariably not sympathetic and ask me to leave their place of employment.

My worklife over the past sixteen plus years has gotten more and more difficult as I seek to balance the responsibilities of motherhood and of work. Again, how potential child abuse issues impact my anxiety levels today is somewhat unknown but something I am working on.

If I want my childcare activities to be front and center or “on,” I need to work at a job that is generally stress free and does not put a priority on a high salary. I am just coming to terms with this reality and starting to seek jobs that are lower stress and relatively lower pay. This includes looking for work that is part-time, that includes flex-time and/or that is not particularly challenging. This also includes just doing volunteer work for the time-being.

So far I have not been able to find the balance between motherhood and a job for pay – even if that is a relatively lower paying job. So I have gravitated toward writing my story with this book / blog series as a way of perhaps finding worklife success in an unconventional manner.

This also includes getting back in touch with the writer in me who attended the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in Middlebury, Vermont some 25 years ago. But instead of fiction writing, I am focusing on telling people the story of my bipolar illness through this text and perhaps through other texts to come in the near or not so near future.

The ultimate job would allow me to spend time with my daughter and be present for her in her after-school activities like cross country, track and chorus. The ability to write about my illness, the challenges it presents and my approaches to tackle those challenges may just be the “ultimate job” I am looking for. Time will tell if my bloglife satisfies my need to work financially or otherwise.

As for the bipolar diagnosis, my husband and I have determined to be relatively transparent to my daughter who is sixteen about mental illness and about addiction issues. We are betting that Nurture will win out over Nature in the future of her life such that she will be minimally impacted by mood swings and addiction issues. We talk openly about how we don’t drink alcohol as a family and how we are very sensitive to moods and mood changes. We have been active in our church and in my daughter’s role as an acolyte as well as a member of the church choir. We hope to be setting the behavioral example that we did not necessarily follow in our growing up years to include marriage at 38 and 42.

I am hopeful that by providing my daughter with a strong home life and spiritual life, she will muddle through the teen years and twenties without signs of either bipolar illness or addiction. Invariably, I am aware that these health concerns will probably not hit until her teens and/or twenties if they do occur. With God’s help, we will steer clear of these obstacles or encounter them in a way that is manageable. With God’s help, we will also steer clear of any abuse issues that may present during her childhood.

For me, much about being a Mom involves letting go of Ego and embracing God. While for years my Ego has told me to “follow the money” and jobs that pay high dollar, I am unable to manage these career expectations and still be present in my daughter’s life. It appears I have “a Mom switch” that it is either on or off with little in between. This leaves my career choices to be a great deal more restricted than they were before the postpartum period. Today I seek a job that will provide “a living wage” that will also provide me the opportunity to get my daughter to cross country or track practice or travel to nearby Augusta for an Honors Chorus performance.

A high-paying job is only feasible for me if I extricate myself from all Mom activities. That leads to a highly stressful and largely empty lifestyle. In my current search for work, the pay and the status are taking a back seat to what it is I can do with and for my daughter on a daily and weekly basis.

I still seek a job that allows a “living wage,” allows meaningful interaction with my daughter and allows ongoing relationship development with my husband. From what I understand from talking to people with no behavioral health concerns, finding this balance is even a challenge for them.