Let me preface by saying I have not been diagnosed with depression or anxiety by a doctor, but I feel it, and from what I have read and heard from people that is what I probably have.

I feel very unstable on any given day, I feel overwhelmed by all of the adult life dealings I have to manage. I also use medicinal cannabis. I live in California, and do have a card. I find it useful for many reasons, but right now the anxiety and depression are some of the top things I like it for. I know there is some controversy in some cases around the use of medicinal cannabis, both in general, and in relation to being Buddhist. I hope you can still accept me and not let it cloud your judgment of me.

*sighs* Anyway… I also have cognitive difficulties, I feel like I hear slower than everyone else, if that makes any sense at all. This has been really destructive in my life recently. Sometimes I will understand what was said 5-10 seconds after I say “What?” and then I feel like an asshole because it looks like I was just not paying attention and had them repeat themselves just for the hell of it. Or I will just miss entire bits of sentences, sometimes it is outside, but other times it’s inside. It doesn’t seem to matter where it is, my brain just processes speech weirdly and I don’t know what to do. I feel like I have to concentrate really hard to ignore interference of other noises and pick up on the speech above everything, sometimes. Like my warmest jacket for instance, makes a lot of noise… and I sometimes miss things because of that. I used to think it was just the hood, because that just made the jacket noise even louder in my ears… but just any noise it makes bores into my brain and it makes it hard to listen to what I really need to be listening to.

I find myself oblivious to other people and I end up being disrespectful and rude, standing in peoples ways or just being awkward. I just want to be “normal” again… and I feel like that’s just not attainable in my current situation, but we are so stuck right now I don’t know how to get out. You may remember from my last post we are trying to move to an actual house, as we are living in a travel trailer next to my mother in law’s house. It is a very stressful thing to live in, especially for over 2 years, and now with a toddler who is growing every day, plus 2 dogs…. yeah.

I guess my main question is, what are you guys doing to combat day to day anxiety? I get to the point where I’m sitting there terrified as if something bad is going to happen later in the day… I don’t think I have ever had a real panic attack but I’ve felt like I have gotten damn close. I end up having to go through my day in my head over and over again to make sure I’m not forgetting something that I should be worried about… and even if I can’t think of anything particularly ‘scary’ in my day I can’t stop the feeling that something bad is going on.

I feel like I could go on forever so I’ll wrap it up.

I’m just looking for as many coping mechanisms as possible… mantras, silent meditations, things I can do on the go (like at work or around other people in a way that they won’t notice if that makes sense)… I just need help and I don’t know what to do.

Thank you all for reading.