courtesy of the awesome Natalie DeeI had a panic attack last week. A full-fledged hyperventilating, heart pounding, must do deep yogic breathing to remedy it, panic attack. What brought this on? A death in the family? Another discipline note sent home from the school? Actual pictures of Demi Moore with a can of Redi-Whip up her nose?? Nope. A friend surprised me by taking my 3rd son (a.k.a. the one who has been insanely obnoxious ever since his sister has been born…2 years ago) for a playdate. Seeing as the eldest two were in school and Jelly Bean was napping, that left me with… no kids! For TWO HOURS.
My mind reeled at this unexpected gift. Do you know how much I can do in two hours without anyone clinging to my leg and peeing down my sock (true story)? This is when the panic set in. Do I write? Blog? Pay bills? Mop the floors? Read a book? What if I make the WRONG choice and WASTE this precious gift?! Oh the hysteria!
So I did what any rational person would do (that’s my new hobby: copying what rational people do in the hopes that someday I will become one) – I posted my quandary on Facebook. Immediately all of my friends replied: Take a nap!
I should have. I’m certainly sleep deprived enough to be able to lay down anywhere anytime and conk out. And yet, I was so worried about not making the most of my time, I cleaned instead. Like many of us, my to-do list is a mile long and I never seem to make much progress on it. So I went up to mop the entry way which thanks to the ridiculous layout of our house doubles as our mud room and therefore needs mopping a hundred times a day. But then I realized I had to sweep first. So I went to get the broom out of the kitchen. Only to get distracted by the breakfast dishes still in the sink. I started loading the dishwasher and then realized I needed to run to the basement to get more dish soap. If I’m going to the basement, I might as well take down a load of laundry! You can see where the two hours went. The worst part is that within an hour of all the kids coming home it was like I hadn’t cleaned at all so I could have saved myself the effort. (Cleaning with children = snow shoveling in a blizzard.)
Thankfully we had sushi for dinner (after all that cleaning I didn’t feel like cooking!) and thanks to the randomness of my mind I remembered The Okinawa Program – a book that I based a Great Fitness Experiment on several years ago. They have a whole chapter on a phenomenon they dubbed “time sickness.” Apparently in Okinawa, most people reject the Type A, overachiever, must-do-everything mentality. As the authors observe, there is a difference “between feeling in control of time of feeling controlled by it.” Oh, Sensei, is this girl ever controlled by time! (Which means that if I ever move to Japan I’ll either have to get a personality transplant or disappear into a poof of magic dust.)
Are You Sick Too?
They offer a handy quiz to discover if you too have Time Sickness. There are 30 statements that if you answer yes to 16 or more you have a “time sickness behavioral pattern.” Let’s just say I hit 16 points by statement number 10 (I gave myself double points for the ones I’m REALLY obnoxious at. Here’s a sample (because let’s be honest, who has time to answer 30 questions??):
1. There is rarely enough time in the day to do all the things that I have to. (My motto. This will someday be written on my tombstone.)
2. It’s irritating for me to sit in traffic. (Just yesterday I was fuming over the fact that instant teleportation a la Star Trek has not come to fruition yet. Journey shmourney – I’m all about the destination!)
3. I sometimes finish other people’s sentences for them. (The Gym Buddies admirably restrain themselves from smacking me as I do this more often than people crack jokes about Mariah Carey bringing her own “globes” to the Golden Globes.)
4. I spend more time and attention on my career than my family. (Mother guilt! My specialty!! And while I answered “no” to this one, it would be a “yes” if the little nippers weren’t so insistent. There will be no ignoring my children.)
5. I often feel I have too many things to do. (Have you met me??)
6. I have trouble concentrating on one thing at a time. (Hello – broom… kitchen… laundry… wait, where’s the baby?!)
7. Passengers in my car ask me to slow down. (You know you have a problem when your 5-year-old screams “Hills are scary, mommy! You go too fast!!”)
8. I would describe myself as goal-oriented. (I suppose that would be the nice way of saying it.)
9. People tell me I talk fast. (Again, have you met me?)
In addition to the above questions, I also ‘fessed up to being irritable, competitive, cynical, a workaholic, perfectionistic, controlling and a micro-manager (just ask my husband about when he loads the dishwasher and later catches me sneaking down in the middle of the night to fix it “the right way”). Frankly the only question out of the 30 I could outrightly say no to was the one that asked if I needed tobacco, alcohol or intoxicants to wind down. I don’t but I’ve often thought that was solely thanks to my religion. Not to mention I don’t really wind down. Like, ever.
Obviously this has got to change. I had an epiphany the other day: even if teleportation were invented, I’d still find a million other things to fill all my newly freed time.
The book does offer a few suggestions to reset your internal clock to Okinawan time:
– Meditate. I love this! I know it helps me. A lot. And yet when I get busy – which is all the time – it’s one of the first things to go.
– Breathing exercises. Again, one I already know and love. This is key to managing my IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).
– Muscle relaxation exercises. Yoga saved my life!
– Hypnosis. Uhhh… no. I had a therapist once who tried to hypnotize me and finally decreed my un-hypnotizable. I’m too much of a control freak. Ah well.
– Healing touch. I love massages in theory. And yet I’ve had exactly one in my entire life and it was when my friend showed up at my door with her massage table and tried to get me to relax while our combined children ran shrieking in circles around us.
– Biofeedback. Never tried this but I know several of you (Hi Leslie!) have had good experiences with this.
– Regular exercise. Finally, one I can say HECK YES to!
– Eat right for your psychospiritual health.
– Maintain your “healing web” a.k.a. your support community: #1 key to longevity!
Other ideas also mentioned include learning to be optimistic, learning to manage hostility and anger, managing your time wisely, cultivating a healthy sense of humor and practicing conscious awareness.
It sounds like a lot but the more I think about it, the more I think these are just the kinds of changes I am looking for. Perhaps I can’t force myself to stop being neurotic about stupid things but maybe I can squeeze out the crazy by filling my life with positive things like this! Well, this and lots of seaweed. One step at a time, right?
Anyone else not know what to do with their free time? Any other time sickees out there? How do you manage it? And there is totally a “right” way and a “wrong” way to load the dishwasher, right??
Sooo….this post is oh-so-timely, as I’ve just gotten home from a 17-hr day at the office (I really, really, really wish I was exaggerating, or that it was due to inefficiency, but really…it was just a lot I needed to get done.).
I took 1.5 hrs for the gym + shower today, but I think that the tradeoff between gym and sleep is moving towards “sleep”. But, at the same time, if I hadn’t gone to the gym, perhaps my last 6 hours of the day wouldn’t have been as productive because I would have been too out of it, and I need my second wind post-workout to get through the remainder of my day.
I think the problem is that people who have time-sickness, don’t feel like they have the time to meditate, or attend yoga, or get massages. But, I personally place a huge premium on health, so I do. My problem is now at the point though that sleep is being given up so that I can make it for an acupuncture appointment at 8am, so that I still have enough time at work.
My conundrum is whether it’s worth maintaining these internal clock resets, or whether I should just be aiming for 7-8 hrs of sleep a night (also apparently super important for health, both physical and mental). Thoughts?
ahhh you KNOW I can relate too.
I have this from 8 till 3 when the child gets home from school.
BAD BAD BAD.
but then Im pretty ok.
I have acknowledge nothing will happen once she exits the bus and time will lose all meaning.
oh
did I mention it hits again at 8 after she’s asleep?
oh it does.
BAD 🙂
I got one yes. I cannot focua on one thing at a time. There is plenty of time in a day to do everything, I am just too dang lazy. Excuse me, now, regardless that the dishes are piling up, I will just go ahead and take a nap.
I got at least 6 points. Is that bad? As I’m so busy during the week, I tend to be extra lazy on the weekends. It’s weird. Whenever I do have some free time, I can’t decide what to do first, so I usually do nothing at all. Ok, except grocery shopping and laundry. This girl needs food and clean clothes, in that order.
We don’t have a dishwasher, so I can’t answer your last question. 😉
Oddly enough, in our house my husband is the one who is picky about loading the dishwasher – I see this as a win because I can just tell him to do it because he does a better job. But the way you clean your house sounds exactly like the way I clean my house – I start on one task and then distractedly (is that a word?) make my way through the house so that nothing ever really gets done. I just do not have the good housekeeping gene which is not fair because my Mom totally has it.
I always feel like I have too much to do and not enough time, but I also have my ‘sanity saving’ rituals that I refuse to give up, so most of the time I come somewhere in the middle. Every once in a while I get stressed and have a freak out though. So yeah, still working on it.
Sometimes I think that a good epitaph for me and my life would be ,”A life well wasted!”
Good news – there IS light at the end of the tunnel! I’ve watched my sisters and now I’m getting to experience it myself. While you have littles in the house, there is no such thing as free time. There are a gazillion things to be done all at once and you can’t possibly do all of them. But then, amazingly, it changes! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sitting around watching Jerry Springer and eating bon bons, I still have TWO full time jobs, a barn full of horses, a house full of dogs, a sink full of dishes and a room full of laundry… but I also do T-Tapp daily, RIDE my horse regularly, READ my Kindle (and my scriptures), and just sit and enjoy the sunset! I’ve finally got a workable schedule so that when I go to bed at night (at a reasonable 10:30) my kitchen is clean, the laundry is done and put away, and I’m able to sleep 7-8 hours and get up to a house that is STILL clean! I think that’s the battle – there’s nobody following me around, undoing everything I just did… Aaaaaaahhhh. I love my children, but I love them EVEN MORE now that they are old enough to be USEFUL! (grin)
The “right” way to load a dishwasher is the way that someone else loads it, thus freeing me from having to do it.
I looked for a like button for this ! So True 🙂
I’m a self induced time sickee at the moment…with school and work and life.
But…strangely enough it started to drive me crazy, so I’ve been seeing a counscellor to helo deal with stress. To cut back, spend more time being present and being organized. Cutting out some things and letting them go for now. It’s hard letting go…and knowing I just have to get through this to finish my thesis makes it easier and harder.
Things still need to get done. I’ll find a balance yet…:)
The big trick is to work your fun stuff into your schedule, and it doesn’t count if you write it down as “free time”. That’s too vague, and means you’ll use your free time to do dishes, vacuum, etc. etc.
Be just as precise as with your exercise schedule, with specific things like:
Read a book
Work on a jigsaw puzzle
Knit a sweater
Take a smoothie into the backyard and watch birds
I may be a little too lax, but I tend to do the things that truly HAVE to get done, then spend the rest of my time on things I WANT to do. Granted, without kids or a marriage (though I do have a boyfriend who has a son), I have more freedom with my time.
Things like dusting, cooking my own dinners and putting away laundry are things that can wait sometimes. The world won’t end if I don’t do them. Putting off some of the mundane tasks gives me more time to positively affect others lives through my volunteering and that is what is important to me.
I’m a single parent (only one child, though) with a full-time job as well as freelance work. I try not to do more than three things at once or things start to go terribly wrong. My time sickness has reached the point now that if I do something creative instead of chore-like, I feel that I’m wasting time. Not good, but I’m working on it. A journalist friend of mine (whose house was filled with stacks of paper and books and remained a huge mess while he was out hiking or skiing) used to have a sign on the wall that read, “Better a house uncleaned than a life unlived,” and this has stuck with me through the years.
The only one of those I said no to was the driving too fast and that’s only because of our terrible accident a couple years ago. Before that people were always giving me a hard time for driving like a maniac. (But no, I wasn’t driving when the accident happened!)
While I know some of this is obviously internal (hello perfectionism) I think a lot of it comes from the society we live in. If you already have these leanings, living in a culture that tells us we need to do everything and do it all now is going to give you time sickness. I feel that pressure constantly career-wise (you got your Master’s at 22, started working for a Fortune 500 company a month later, what’s next?!), personal life-wise (you’ve found a great guy, time to plan the perfect wedding and start having babies ASAP!), even in my hobbies (you have to devote X amount of time to photography every week or you’ll never get better!). And then I break down because I’m so paralyzed by the thought of everything I need to do that I can’t manage any of it.
I’m slowly starting to get better at saying “no”. No both to things that I don’t really want to do but feel bad turning down and no to all the things out there that tell me I have to be stressed to have a perfect life. Example: all the articles on “how to reduce stress while planning your wedding!” Here’s my solution: Finding the perfect color of cocktail napkins is getting to me? Time to go to Costo, buy white ones, and be done with it. And trying (and occasionally succeeding) at taking things one thing at a time and letting the future and the past be what they are.
Oh, all sounds familiar…especially at work. I have time sickness at work.
“Whenever I do have some free time, I can’t decide what to do first, so I usually do nothing at all.”
Me too. Although I am getting better at using my free time to nap, despite all the things on my to do list.
But, you are not allowed to count exercise as a remedy. Sorry. 🙁 By your own accounts, you like to wrench every last ounce of sweat out of your workouts, which I’m relating to its own form of time sickness. Ready (or willing?) to do another challenge where you don’t try to push yourself to the limit each time? Think about it…a month of leisurely strolling on the treadmill…not lifting until the point of muscle soreness…nooo!
Gosh I said yes to 6 of your 9 statements. So yes I’m a bit time sick. How do I keep the crazy under control?
Try not to be a perfectionist – every bit of housework blesses the house – (says Flylady) – even 5 minutes tidying up.
I do have a to do list but try not to see failure if there are things left on it, just see achievement at the things I have crossed off.
If I don’t feel up to doing stuff when I should, take a step back, and focus on the worst that could happen if I don’t do X – often not a lot is the answer.
Take time for myself when my body tells me to and attempt to push all guilty thoughts about waste of time to the back of my mind – cos its not a waste, I’ll feel better the next day and ready to achieve again.
xx
I can relate in so many ways!
Except housework.
Seriously, it’s pretty amazing the lengths I will go to in order to avoid it. If I put half the effort into cleaning as I do into avoiding it, my home would be spotless.
Alas, we no longer have a working dishwasher, so I cannot speak to right and wrong ways of loading one.
Now more than ever before, I think we may have been twins at some point. By the time my kids were 3 and I would yell “MOVE B!+CH!” at someone dallying at a red light, they would instantly begin jamming and singing “Git out tha way, git out tha way, Beep. Git out tha way!” So, I have to say that with the exception of maybe 2 things in this whole post, we’re almost identical in personality. And, by the way, how the AYCH EE DOUBLE HOCKEY STICKS are you supposed to meditate and clear your mind when it’s a constantly revolving lazy Susan of a bazilliony trillion Times Square sized sticky notes of to do, to no do, to get to, and to remembers???
Oh gosh, I definitely time sickness. I have to-do lists written about my to-do lists, but there is never enough time in the day, and don’t even get me started on how quickly nap time flies by. Oh, and yes, there is totally a right way to load the dishwasher, and I don’t bother sneaking back to do it. I just glare and reload it right in front of my husband. 🙂
Um, the only right way to load a dishwasher is to get as much stuff in it while still allowing it to clean everything relatively decently.
As for time sickness, I’m like several other commenters. I just throw my hands up and do whatever I want, instead of what needs to be done. Call my mom instead of clean the bathroom, or surf FB instead of organizing my closets, etc. Sometimes nap, but usually not, as I tend to have bouts of insomnia that is worsened by naps. Although if I’m super anxious and depressed/worried, then I’ll definitely sleep my days away versus actually facing them beyond doing the basics.
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I tried hypnosis once too. It completely freaked me out (eeeeek no control!), so I’ve never done it again.
It’s kinda challenging for a control freak to, uh, relinquish control 🙂
I wish it were only the dishwasher I had to re-pack in order to have it right! Sadly I re-organize the cupboards, put everything away that came out of the dishwasher the 2nd time around (no one seems to know where anything goes!) and I refold the laundry if my husband does it. What can I say, he folds wrong :s
I tried hypnosis for my IBS. It made everything worse and I’m pretty sure contributed to giving me an anxiety problem. Definitely not trying that one again.
I think I would have to be one of the most time sick people out there! I spend my whole life stressing about how I don’t have time to get everything done (and doing 10 thousand things at once, probably never quite finishing any of them!)
Loved this post! I am Anxiety Girl! I cleaned (or attempted to clean) the house Saturday morning and have no idea why because it was messy by lunch time! This is pretty much how it goes every Saturday! You’d think I’d have figured it out by now! My kids are the ultimate snow storm and I continue to try to shovel! I need to just put the shovel away and relax! I don’t know why but I get so anxious over a sink full of dishes and piles of laundry! I don’t have time during the day to do housework but when the weekend comes and I do have time, I do not feel like cleaning!
There is definitely a right way to load the dishwasher but I’d be happy however it was loaded as long as it wasn’t me who had to do it!
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The fact that I found this article by googling time sickness is my first clue that I am a candidate for that feeling. Not sure what to do. I know adequate rest is probably the proper answer, but it never feels like I truly have the time to get adequate rest without serious consequences, such as falling behind in my stressful quest to keep up with monthly expenses like rent and health insurance.
I notice that I must be pushing harder than I can handle because whenever I get a bit of time to unwind, I don’t want to get out of bed all morning or all day (sometimes I just plain can’t) yet it’s very hard to let myself relax. I feel tightness in my chest at the merest thought of all the things I will have to do after I relax, so relaxing never really feels like relaxing, unless I surrender to it in a way that is increasingly difficult to permit myself.
I think several years of this pattern have affected my nervous system for the worse, and now it follows unfortunate patterned responses. I do manage to meditate now and then, sometimes for many consecutive days, often for long periods, like an hour per sitting. It definitely helps, but often the discipline to do it becomes another form of time sickness, as if I am forcing helpful things, and by forcing them, I am creating more time sickness.
It is getting to the point presently that I have to throw caution to the wind and rest for days and days and days, while my current life structure does not fully accommodate this need, so giving myself the time off will likely have implications for the semesters ahead in grad school, or making a living to support it.
I definitely agree with people who have said in other posts that there is a cultural piece to this situation and being highly susceptible to the manic pace of our world makes things harder for many of us, for me anyway. I get caught up in the stress around me and react to it and then I’m running too quickly again.
There’s so much more i could say, but maybe that’s enough for now. It’s 2am and I guess I’m going to see if maybe I can settle down enough to chill for a while.