how to deal with extreme stress and anxiety?
ByThis week has been devastating for me. I had found out that my mom might very likely have liver cancer (and potentially stage 4 with mets to liver for that). After i found out, I became extremely stressed out. It really doesn’t help that my first college finals started. For the past 5, I’ve been sleeping at tops 3hours a day, sometimes even sleeping for about half an hour before I wake up again. I wake up and the first thing I think about is my mom and I can’t go on with the day. At most, I studied 2 hours for each final. Like expected, I most likely failed all my finals (I have one more to go, but I can’t get myself to focus on it at all). Before all this, I had A’s in everyone of the classes…now that seems like a distant thing. Because of how much each final is worth, it is also potentially likely that I will fail a class this quarter. That has also brought me a sense of depression and uselessness. I’ve lost my appetite, choosing to eat just one meal out of necessity to maintain my body and I know that i’ve lost about 5lbs so far. My family was planning to buy a house under my sister’s name but it has just come out that my sister had secretly gotten married (they later broke up) and now we stand to loose $10,000 and the house/loans. This has hurt me the most. I heard the anger and hurt in my mom’s voice and I just completely broke down and can’t stop crying.
Is there anyway I can cope with all this right now? I’ve always been someone with a large imagination and worrisome nature and now, I really don’t know what to do anymore.
I’m actually not worried about the finals themselves (well, i don’t think i am) because as sad as it sounds, I get chills and I still think about my mom. I really can’t imagine life with her with cancer and the pain of chemo and everything. I go through the finals and actually just go through the motions — plug and chug anything I know. I don’t care about it when I turn it in and I don’t think about it until someone else mentions it. The reason I’m concerned about my grades is because my ultimate goal was med school. I don’t think it looks too good if I failed gen chem or some other class. I’m praying that my mom doesn’t have liver/stomach cancer and I will continue to pray for that. How can I possibly explain it? Not only that, I had wanted to become a psychiatrist…yes, even when I can’t control my own emotions.
It’s not uncommon for you to be down at a time like this. Clearly all these issues are getting to you. Talk with someone close, perhaps a boyfriend? Girlfriend? whatever. Keeping everything in ur head is only going to stress you out even more. You need to talk with someone and just relax and take everything one by one.
If your mom does have liver cancer, you should talk with her and be with her all the time. Talk to her about it all for that matter. Everyone can say this, there is nobody like your mom, and you dont want to regret not being with her incase things do get bad.
But yeah, just stay positive, because in reality, that’s all you can really do is accept things.
3 Comments
December 19th, 2011 at 8:14 am
I am so unbelievably sorry! Well, I’ve never dealt with anything like that, but I am a worrier as well. I make everything a biggerkick deal than what it has to be, and I stress about it constantly. The only thing that has helped me is music. Honestly. I suggest you try that. Listen to a song that fits your pain in anyway, and CRY IT OUT. After that, you’ll sleep from your eyes being tired. I hope I helped in someway! Good luck Jazzy! God bless x
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December 19th, 2011 at 8:43 am
It’s not uncommon for you to be down at a time like this. Clearly all these issues are getting to you. Talk with someone close, perhaps a boyfriend? Girlfriend? whatever. Keeping everything in ur head is only going to stress you out even more. You need to talk with someone and just relax and take everything one by one.
If your mom does have liver cancer, you should talk with her and be with her all the time. Talk to her about it all for that matter. Everyone can say this, there is nobody like your mom, and you dont want to regret not being with her incase things do get bad.
But yeah, just stay positive, because in reality, that’s all you can really do is accept things.
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December 19th, 2011 at 9:25 am
First things first, I am so sorry to hear about your mom.
It’s completely normal to be stressed out (especially when you have to deal with something as big as that)
Try and stay positive: Not just about your mom but your finals too. I’m sure you haven’t failed them and even if you have - people will understand when they find out about the difficult circumstances.
You sound very worried about your finals, so I think you should go and speak to someone, explain to them why you think you haven’t done well and tell them that you’ve been under a lot of stress due to some devastating news about your mom. I’m sure they’ll understand.
If you really can’t sleep then maybe you need to get some sleeping pills or something - visit your doctor about it.
You need to eat as well (I know it can be really hard to do that when difficult things are going on, but REALLY try. It doesn’t have to be a lot. Maybe just a couple of slices of toast or something - because at least that’s better than nothing)
In the daytime, you should try and take your mind off things, try and think of other things rather than my mom (this is also a hard thing to do but it’s definitely not helping when you think about her too much)
Go and meet up with some friends or something, that should take your mind off things.
Hope this helped and I really hope you get rid of all this stress too.
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