Where are my hot dogs?

Where are my hot dogs? 

Most of the time I can manage my anxiety. I struggle with it most when I am physically ill, especially when I have a fever.

For a number of situations, I have built myself a toolbox of canned responses to particularly common situations that I encounter. That’s partly an approach, and partly a that I stumbles into years ago when learning to discern the truth of my own mind talk. I am more intentional about it now, because I see a who has done extensive work with addicts. He encourages clients to think in terms of what they can do instead of feeding their addiction. It makes sense to me that this is also a tool for anxiety. Negative self thoughts become addictive; they feed one’s mind talk about new situations.

“Negative self thoughts become addictive: they feed one’s mind talk about new situations.”

Today, I struggled to find the hot dogs I bought yesterday. My mind talk becomes anxious when I lose things. If you’ve ever read the children’s book “If you give a mouse a cookie” my mind talk looks a lot like that. Only it isn’t the humorous version where the mouse also asks for a glass of milk, a napkin, and so forth. My mind talk chases me to catastrophic thinking–that is, if I forget my toolbox and allow it to overtake my brain.

Since losing things/anxiety are a common theme, I have a plan in my “toolbox” for various things I might lose. Basically, I follow a pattern to look in certain places carefully once, not multiple times.

Here’s my storybook nightmare in which I am the mouse and the hot dogs are the cookie and every other thing the mouse wants might have played out in the past:

‘I want lunch. I will eat at home.’

‘I will get the hot dogs I bought yesterday out of the refrigerator.’ I rummage through the refrigerator failing to find them.

‘If they aren’t in the refrigerator, they must be in the freezer. It won’t be fast, I’ll have to thaw them.’ The freezer does not contain the hot dogs.

‘I must have missed them.’ I repeat the process two or three times, before admitting that I may have left them out. I start to look.

‘They must be somewhere in the kitchen.’ (Panic mode sets in.)

I check the counters, table, chair, top of frig and other appliances.
I look inside the cupboards.
I look inside the oven. 
I look inside the dishwasher that I never use.
Panic ramps up.
‘I won’t find them til they rot and smell.’
‘What if I don’t find them before I close the door and windows before I go to the wedding? The smell will be awful when I come back. (The wedding is four weeks away.)
‘I must have carried the bag into the other room.’

(Rinse, repeat, apply same logic to living room, bathroom, bedroom. Go back and recheck kitchen.)

Sit down overwhelmed. (Tears or anger likely at this point.)
‘You’re getting forgetful, it must be early dementia.’
‘You really are crazy.’
‘You’re not going to be able to live alone.’
‘You’re going to be a burden to the girls.

You can see how it spirals down. And, I haven’t even thought to look in the car yet.

That’s a picture of my out of control anxiety. But, while some glitches remain, I have better tools now to not follow that mouse.

I know I displace things when I come home tired from shopping. Here’s an abbreviated list of my toolbox help:

1. Shop from a list.
2. Keep refrigerator as empty as possible and still have enough to fix a few meals.
3. Keep clutter out of kitchen.
4. When looking for the missing hot dog in the frig, I pick up every item (why I keep it sparse) and ask. ‘Is this a hotdog?’. (I usually find the missing hot dogs during this step.) If I don’t find the hot dog, it’s ok. I don’t have to recheck the frig, because I have asked about every item in it. The same is true with checking freezer and cupboards.
5. I get through the rooms and car quickly.
6. I still haven’t found the hotdogs, but I see that I don’t have other things I bought–jello, and four Stouffer’s meals (They were on sale 4/$9.) Could I have left the food in the grocery cart?
7. Check receipt. I paid for those items. Did I leave the bag?
8. I call the store. Tell them what might have happened. Did I leave the bag there? Yes? Was it unrefrigerated too long?
9. They tell me to bring in the receipt, they will replace the items.
10. It all took far less time than panicking would have.
11. I did not have a full blown panic attack. (About half an hour, compared to what might have been two hours and a lot of tears.

I did not have a full blown panic attack. (About half an hour, compared to what might have been two hours and a lot of tears.)