A Quick Bounce back from Anxiety for Zack

Despite today being a Saturday, Zack had an appointment with one of his psychologists today.  His one psychologist - Dr. Stein is so busy that it is difficult to get an appointment with him regardless of the day.  As a result most of our appointments with him occur on Saturdays.  What was astounding about this appointment is what came out of Zack's mouth and head.  Today Zack opened up in a way that he hasn't opened up in 4.5 years of therapy.  He communicated to Dr. Stein one of the deepest level fears that he has that has driven his anxiety complex for much of the last 5 years. 

I don't want to go into the specifics of what Zack said because it is something that is relatively personal to Zack.  Ultimately digging through all the meanings of what he said, his biggest fear has to do with death and how Patty's death came about.  I really thought I knew everything there was to know about Zack and his anxiety complexes but this one really took me by surprise.  Even more surprising was the fact that he was willing to put this topic on the table only 2 weeks after he suffered a major anxiety meltdown.

What this tells me is that the new medication Zack is taking - Abilify is doing some significant good for Zack.  The amount he has been fear mongering has diminished substantially.  He is now able to go to school and function much better than before.  Additionally, this past Wednesday he was able to stay at home by himself for 4 hours while I went and did my volunteer work.  This evening I was able to go out for 2 hours and meet with several friends for a happy hour birthday celebration.  So he is really making some progress with his recovery from his anxiety meltdown.  All I can say is I am very proud of him for the strides he is making and the ownership he wants to take to rid himself of his anxiety.  His brain chemistry seems to be on the upswing and his eyes are again bright!

After his appointment we headed downtown as I had a bunch of Nugget tickets that I needed to pickup at the Pepsi Center Box office.  We visited with Nancy at Cranbrook for a while and then we headed home.  The rest of my day was spent working on the giant purge.  I have been working at organizing things, cleaning things up and purging lots and lots of things.  Today I got rid of a ton of stuff and I have a huge pile of things I want to send to Goodwill.

This evening I headed out to the Rio Grande restaurant in Lone Tree to meet up with a group of friends.  Since the end of things with Shelly I have been trying very hard to build a social circle that includes a lot of different people.  As such I have reached out to many old friends from my younger years.  Tonight was a chance to catch up with several old friends as we got together for some drinks and dinner for a birthday celebration.  It wasn't anything big, but it was nice to reconnect with friends from long ago.  I don't know when I will have the chance to do this again, but at least it was good to re-connect with people if only briefly.  And I will say it takes a lot of work to build a strong social circle.  I know being single you really need to have this strong social circle so I will keep up the effort to reconnect with old friends and make new friends.  Because Zack was home alone I only stayed out for 2 hours but he did very well.  He called me two times to ask me questions but otherwise he did fine.

The rest of this evening has been spent playing World of Tanks and watching TV - not exactly a productive evening. Even though I had gone out I was home by 9:00PM and Zack got to bed at 9:15PM.  Since he has been going through his anxiety meltdown I have been trying to ensure he gets a lot more sleep.  The funny thing is that he is not fighting me about it.  Normally in days past he would be so angry if he had to go to bed before 10:00PM on a weekend night.  Now he willingly goes to bed at 9:15PM - utterly amazing!

Tomorrow will be another working day here around the house.  Though my back is killing me I am trying to get as much stuff done as is humanly possible.  I have goals that I want to meet and purging stuff is a key part of those goals.  I don't know exactly why but I do feel very driven to accomplish stuff.  Well - I know why but I talk about the situation so much that some days I just need to let it rest.  I don't know if doing all this work is going to get me closer to the goal I have, but in my heart I have hope it will.

Well it is late as I have spent too much time this evening playing my World of Tanks game so I am going to wrap it up for now.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Thanks and peace to all! ~ J.