Something happened to me back in March that stopped me from logging in and recording my activity for a whole month: I lost my phone. Before then I was very diligent. I logged each of my activities and took great pleasure in recording my efforts and getting feedback from my friends. I didn’t replace my phone for a month. I stopped recording my efforts and soon I didn’t have to prove that I was doing anything.
So I stopped logging. Then, I stopped jogging… .
Even when I purchased a new phone, I found I had started to let go of the motivation that got me regularly exercising at the start of the year. Writing this blog wasn’t the only motivation that got me moving. I am not that shallow and narcissistic, but this blog certainly helped. I found I was making excuses for not exercising and I was deferring to the priority of other things in my life. Some of those things were important, some were less so. It was sort of nice to be so flagrantly lazy, especially after months of being so disciplined.
Now it’s not so nice. Three (3) months later Melbourne is in the depths of winter. It’s bleak, dark and cold, and I don’t like it. I am more indoors, than out, which means I am more sendentry and house/office/tram bound. I am starting to feel unfit. I look unfit, and my mental health is suffering a few blows too.
Having generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is awful, it’s innocuous and invisible most of the time, but it’s there. If I don’t manage my GAD it can have the effect of slowly eroding my self esteem and motivation to the point where I feel mentally paralysed. I used to think this feeling of paralysis was depression. And whilst anxiety can lead to depression, I don’t think that’s what I experience.
I find that during these periods of intense anxiety, I become inactive. I become less able to make decisions and even less able to act even if I do. All I want to do is sleep. I have an overwhelming sense of futility about what I will achieve even if I do do something. What I find during a period of ‘paralysis’ is a slow build of tension. It’s awful to be in the middle of it because there is no release. What I know, however, is that I have a threshold. If I can just make it to that point I know I will break free of the paralysis.
When I do beak free, it’s amazing. I burst into activity and I find the rush of getting back into things utterly exhilarating. I tend to go on about it like a mad zealot to my friends and family. Those of you who are friends and family will either know this already, or will be having an ‘Ah hah!’ moment right now.
The thing is that the paralysis has only just broken after three (3) months. Something has changed. I think I’m more tolerant of my paralysis. I think I kind of like it… a bit more than I should. Maybe I’m getting older, and I care less. These are not bad things to accept and embrace. But I think that it means I need a new way of moving through these periods of paralysis. I think I need to be less passive about the build, and I need to create my own interventions, or ask for help.
So that’s what this post is about: it’s a very obvious outing of myself, and an effort to articulate what I know I have to do.
I think that instead of a burst of exhilarating activity, I need to be conscious and mindful about what I choose to do and when and why. That way I can get back to regular exercise without allowing the tension caused by GAD to build and not dissolve. That way I can normalise the whole reason I started this blog: to make exercise a seamless part of my everyday.
Year of the Body 