Managing Triggers

I haven't been sleeping well again the past few days. I'm scheduled for a test again tomorrow and I'm a bit anxious about it. My doctors have poked me so many times this year, but I never get used to it (and you shouldn't!). Aside from that I've had to deal with other things that set off my PTSD. 

The past year has been a test of patience and resilience. It's something a lot of pulmonary embolism survivors go through. In our patient group there's always someone who asks for help to deal with anxiety. This stems from the feat that you can clot again and you can die from it. I've had two clotting episodes and the second one has been really hard to recover from because the first one is still around! 

To recover from an illness you have to be strong mentally. I only started getting better when I got help. My doctor advised that you need to understand your triggers. You also need to be able to arrest the trigger and purposely pull yourself to another direction. It's not easy to do. I cried the other day because my doctor scolded me for asking too many questions. He apologized after a few minutes, but it already made me feel so bad. 

When the tears started to fall Sweetie asked what was wrong. I told him I got super stressed. In between hiccups I told him I needed milk tea haha. The tears immediately stopped. To be honest I had a hard time sleeping that night because of the incident. I felt better yesterday, but was once again triggered when a friend said I was fat. It took me hours to fall asleep again. I finally did when I thought about my dog Jolly. 

Yesterday's Didache reflection by Bo Sanchez was helpful of putting things in proper perspective. He said instead of battling "demons" think of the incident as God's way. You can think of the triggers as a way to deal with issues or as a way of learning. Now I will always ask myself, "What is God trying to teach me?". This will help me stay away from feeling bad and getting emotional. 

Please pray for me tomorrow as I undergo another test. May God bless the hands of the experts who will poke me again. 

CB///*Yr2/144 #StuckAtHomeDay/Yr2/167 #NewG303 #Home61 #Xmas114 #StayHome #BeKind