Rebuilding Rob

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What is a telltale sign that you are going through a tough time?

I have several telltale signs and I’m going through a tough time. As someone who has issues with anxiety, my telltale signs of a tough time are the typical anxiety symptoms.

A deer in the headlights

Felicity, who may not be familiar with the idiom, “a deer in the headlights” as a reference to the way that a deer might act when it runs across the road in front of the moving automobile. Sometimes, the deer will just stop in traffic. It won’t know what to do. It may start to over analyze the situation. They may think if they run, then they will get hit by the car. Then again, they may also be thinking that if they choose to stop, maybe the driver of the car will stop the car before the deer gets hit.

Sometimes, when I’m getting particularly stressed over a situation, or a decision I have to make, I will over, analyze it to death. I will think about all possible outcomes to a point that I end up, taking no course of action. Like a deer in the headlights, I just freeze. 

Frozen

This one hasn’t happened to me too much lately, but there was one time roughly 18 months ago were a kid two was over for the weekend. At this point, I can’t even remember if it was a Saturday or Sunday. I wanna say it was a Saturday, but it could’ve just as easily been a Sunday. I remember just getting really down about things and actually started to cry. Keep in mind, for those who do not know reading this, there is a big difference between being anxious and suffering from anxiety. Likewise, there is a huge difference between simply being depressed and going through a bout of depression. This was anxiety, and if it’s stuck around for too long, I could’ve turned into a full on bout of depression.

I couldn’t bring myself to leave the house. I knew something was wrong. In hindsight, I can’t even say that there was something in particular that was bothering me. Yes, there are things that were concerning me, but nothing had me really freaking out. And it’s as if just all cylinders fired at pretty much the same time and I found myself unable to move. Kid2 was over, and I didn’t want him to see me going through that. I knew that if I got myself out of the house and got and doing something, it would certainly help me get a grip on the anxiety , if not kill it altogether.

So at that point, I just looked at my son and I said “come on, we’re going out”. I think we went to the grocery store or ran some other everyday errands like that. I just had to do something to get myself moving. Getting myself moving would be enough to get myself out of my own headspace.

Throwing in the towel

And finally, there are some times when I resign myself to whatever inevitable fate awaits me. Rather than making a choice in a situation rather than choosing one course of action – right or wrong. Maybe this can really go under the header in the headlights from above. But this isn’t even a case of me becoming paralyzed with fear. In this scenario, I simply give up. I don’t even try.

I haven’t had any experience like this since my sophomore year in college. I had four classes during last winter semester. I ended up driving three of them. Even as it was, with my only remaining class, I barely squeaked by. At that time, I wasn’t even aware that I was dealing with anxiety or depression. I mean, I realized something was happening to me, but I hadn’t been medically diagnosed or talked to anybody professionally at this point.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts

• Rob’s Retro Movie Review: This is Spinal Tap (1984) – The Movie That Scaled to Eleven
• A Death in the Family (And My Disposable Income): My Life in Comics
• The Supporting Cast: Navigating the Eras of Male Friendship
• Life is What Happens: A Look Back at My Non-Existent 2025 Vision
• The Moment I Walked Inside a Hallmark Movie

The article “Mental Red Flags” first appeared in Rebuilding Rob.