In a few hours I will be embarking on a long trip home to the Philippines to see my mother and family. I just want it to happen right away because I only slept for two hours since yesterday.
Well, I am up right now since eleven. My throat is dry, my pulses are fast, and my stomach is full of imaginary butterflies. I am sleep deprived and tired. Fatigue is trying to set in and overcome my senses. I felt so uncontrollably numb and jittery. I am so giddy over my preparation for this long trip to the Philippines. I don't know what to expect from this short vacation. I am palpitating a lot and a little bit panicky over something I don't know.
My body is in a fight-or-flight response. I can feel my adrenaline rushing in me which caused a lot of physical, psychological, and emotional symptoms and some irrational feelings in response to an impending stress, which is probably my scheduled trip today to the Philippines. I felt so overwhelmed on what to prepare and what to expect from this trip.
As we all know, anxiety is a fear of the unknown. According to Wikipedia it is a psychological and physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components. These components combine to create an unpleasant feeling that is typically associated with uneasiness, fear, or worry.
It is a generalized mood condition that occurs without an unidentifiable trigerring stimulus. As such, it is distinguished from fear, which occurs in the presence of an observed threat. Additionally, fear is related to the specific behaviors of escape and avoidance, whereas anxiety is the result of threats that are perceived to be uncontrollable or unavoidable.
Another view is that it is a future oriented mood state in which one is ready or prepared to attempt to cope with upcoming negative events suggesting that it is a distinction between future versus present dangers that divides anxiety and fear.
Anxiety is considered to be a normal reaction to stress. It may help a person to deal with a difficult situation by prompting one to cope with it. Someone suffering from anxiety might also experience it as a sense of dread or panic. Although panic attacks are not experienced by every anxious person, they are a common symptom, in which the perception of danger is very real. Panic attacks usually come without warning.
Anxiety does not only consist of physical symptoms. There are many emotional and psychological symptoms as well. Feelings of apprehension or dread, trouble concentrating, feeling tense or jumpy, anticipating the worst, irritability, restlessness, watching (and waiting) for signs (and occurences) of danger, and feeling like your mind is blank. There is also nightmares and bad dreams, obssessions about sensations, deja vu which is a trap in your mind feeling, and feeling like everything is scary.
One of the most common symptoms of anxiety is fear. You feel an intense fear when you think of dying, or you may think of it more often than normal, or can't get it out of your mind. But I don't manifest this kind of fear. The fear that I have right now is the fear of "what ifs". What if something happens along the way, or what if my family are not happy for my coming back home.
I have a lot of expectations from this trip and I am fearing that some of it would not be realized in such a short time. These expectations makes me overly anxious and extremely apprehensive.
As a knowledgeable person for sure I know how to handle unavoidable threats in my life. And my coping mechanisms are so extensive and vast, that I know how to get out of my own anxious and stressful situation. I don't want to succumb myself to depression which is the last stage of anxiety and I don't want to be branded as a coward. Coward in a sense of not being able to cope with my own fears and my own anxiety.
Everyone of us has their own way of fighting stress in their lives and we all have different maneuvers or approaches in getting rid of them. Whatever it is, go for it because I believe that whatever makes us comfortable will make our homeostasis balanced which will eventually get rid of our own anxieties, fears, and apprenhensions.
Well, I hope this trip will turn out good as what I will be expecting. I know anxiety will be lurking anywhere and I will be ready to face it so that I can enjoy this mini-vacation.
And writing this blog is another way (and a productive one) of getting away from it.
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