Author: Janna

I am a wife, mother, librarian and lover of learning new things. Amazing and Terrifying is all about my journey in this world. My purpose is to help as many people as I can choose and live the life that they want. Thank you for visiting!

He’s not my dad!

Last month my mom and stepdad were coming to visit for a couple of days.  The boys kept asking when my mom and dad would be here.  Every time I would say, “He isn’t my dad!”  Now my stepdad is an awesome person that married into a very crazy family 4 years ago.  He handles us very well and is very patient with the bedlam we bring along when we come to visit.  But he isn’t my dad.  After a couple of days of the boys calling him my dad I was getting frustrated.

 

Our youngest said something about my dad coming to visit, I’m sure trying to get a rise out of me and he got it!  I almost yelled, “He isn’t my dad!!!”  Our youngest then said, “Well he might not be your dad but at least you have someone that loves you and wants to be around you.”  From the mouth of babes right?!  I was very humbled and decided to change my view.

 

He may not be my biological father but he does love my mom, me and the boys.  He does all he can for us and enjoys having us around.  That really sounds like a dad to me!

 

This got me thinking about the way that I look at the world.  Too often I get stuck in one view and it doesn’t change.  This man is my stepdad end of story.  But my youngest taught me that looking at life through a different view gives me so much more than at first I was willing to see.

 

What could change in your world if you were just willing to look at it just a little differently?

Thoughts Build a Life

I have been thinking a lot about self care lately.  Part of the reason for that is because it seems like everywhere I turn someone is talking about self care. Is that true for everyone or do I just really need to hear the message?   Another reason I have been thinking about it is because I know that I HAVE to take care of myself.  When I take care of myself the anxiety and depression are so much easier to handle.  So this month I decided that I would share with you some of the ways that I take care of myself.  Look for Self Care Thursday every Thursday in August!

One of the easiest things you can do to take care of yourself is to pay attention to your thoughts.  We have so many thoughts that run through our heads and most of the time we don’t even realize what those thoughts are or how they may affect you.  I know there were times that I would be in the middle of a panic attack and not even know what caused it.

So here is the tip: pay attention to the thoughts in your head.  Especially what you tell yourself about yourself.  This may take some practice if you are not accustomed to paying attention to your thoughts.  But it is a skill that can be learned.

The easiest way to do this is to grab a cheap notebook and pick a time each day that you can take five-ten minutes and write down all of thoughts you have in your head at that time.  It may be difficult at first to hear what you were telling yourself but stick with it!  It will get easier and you will be amazed and what you learn!

Another trick I learned from Jamie Knapp at Illuminate Mentoring (She is awesome!! Seriously look her up she has online classes that are life changing!! Look up Illuminate Mentoring on FaceBook)  Is to get two notebooks one is black the other can be which ever color you like.  Whenever you feel sad, depressed or just not yourself get out your black notebook and write down all of the negative thoughts you can remember.  When you get out all of the negative you bring out the other notebook.  In this other notebook you change each of the negative thoughts to a positive one.

Here is an example because I kinda had a hard time switching the negative to a positive.  A very common negative thought for me is that I must do exactly what others want to make them happy.  I cannot make any mistakes.  Changing that to a positive: I am a worthwhile person and others like me for who I am and they love me and forgive my mistakes.

Can you feel the difference between the negative and the positive?  I know that paying attention to your thoughts will make such a difference in your life.  I know that as I have changed the way I talk to myself my life has been changing.

So go get your notebooks and start taking care of yourself!!! (This is a perfect time to go get new notebooks because you have to buy them for back to school anyway.  Get yourself something cute!  Oh and maybe a new pen or two.  I love school supplies can you tell?)

Don’t look down!!!

Sky Trail Navigator Comes to Wahooz

Our family vacation this year was spent at Wahooz!  They have changed a lot since the last time we visited.  One of the changes was the addition of a ropes course.  When I first heard about it I thought it would be a little course with a couple of different things to do.  But the reality was very different, it was huge!  It is two levels the first level is about 20 feet off the ground with different paths going every which way.  It kind of looks like a spider web.  Then there is a second level another 15 feet up.

 

I was so excited to try this out.  I have rock climbed and repelled and it is so much fun!  I thought the ropes course would be something like rock climbing.  My husband and my niece where the first ones on the course and they looked like they were having so much fun.  They were walking around on the different levels no problem.  So we went and got the safety gear on and started up the stairs to the first level.

 

All of the kids scattered to the different paths and were having a blast!  The landing that you come up on has three different paths coming off of it.  I went to step off onto one of the paths and remembered that I really hate heights!  I could step off with one foot but I couldn’t get the other foot off of the landing.

 

My hubby came down to help me.  His first advice was to look ahead to where you are going not where you put your foot right now.  I listened I did but I still couldn’t move.  Finally I decided that I had to move onto one of the paths even if everything in me was yelling at me to get back down on the ground.  I have fought too hard to let the fear win.  So I moved!

 

I decided to go across the path that was a rope that you walk on and a rope that was just above chest height that you could hold onto.  As I worked my way across the path every muscle in my body was tensed.  Every time I moved the ropes would start swinging.  When they would start swinging I would react by moving in the opposite direction.  I was trying to control the ropes but all I did was to make the swinging worse.  I finally got control of myself and the ropes and made it across to the next landing.

 

My husband helped me across the rest of the paths and as I got more comfortable each path was easier and easier.  We spent about an hour on the ropes course and then went and did the other fun things that Wahooz has to offer.

 

Later that day my youngest wanted to do the course again so I went up with him.  This time because I had done it before I was much more relaxed.  Getting my second foot off the platform was still hard but I was able to do it without help this time.  We did end up doing that first path again and I learned something.

 

I learned that if I just relaxed into the swing instead of fight it there was much less swing. I slowed down and enjoyed the journey across.  Especially because our youngest is hilarious and always has something funny to say.  As I finished the course the second time I started to think about what I had learned.  

 

First, my husband taught me that instead of looking at where I am and stressing about how scary it will be to move forward I should look to where I am going.  He told me to look just a little way ahead on the path.  This helped so much when I finally did it because it made the ground blurry and I could really focus on the rope.  But it also took the pressure off of  what I felt I HAD to do right now.  All I had to do was move forward to the point ahead.

 

Too often in life I look at this huge goal I have and it so overwhelming I have no idea how I am ever going to accomplish it.  Aron taught me that I just need to look at the next step while keeping the big goal in mind.  That way I know where I want to get to but I focus on the steps to get there not this huge scary thing I’m trying to do.

 

Second, I learned that when I relaxed into the scary parts it made it much easier.  Instead of tensing every muscle in my body I tried to relaxing into the harness and waiting for the ropes to stop moving.

 

In life there are times that are so hard!  When I was in the middle of the anxiety I reacted to an anxiety attack much like I did the first rope path.  I tensed up got angry and scared that I was having another anxiety attack which made the attack even worse.  As I have learned more about anxiety and how to handle it I have realized that I need to just relax into it.  Now when the anxiety starts I acknowledge it.  I let it take its course through my body and I find something else to do or think about.  Before I know it the anxiety is gone and I didn’t have to suffer.  

 

I know that life is hard and there are times that are just ugly.  But I also know that those times are NOT going to last forever.  Relax into that time when life is hard.  Look to your next step.  Look to what needs done right now then the next right now.  Slow down.  Take care of yourself.  Ask for help from people you trust.  Say no to things you don’t want to do or can’t handle right now.  Know your limits and respect them.  You are OK right now.  You don’t have to do anything to fix you because you are perfect!  Right Now YOU are perfect!  Just the way you are!

 

It’s my party!

Tomorrow is my birthday! I have now reached the age that when I am asked what I want for more birthday I can’t answer.  Five years ago I would never have believed that I would reach an age where I couldn’t answer with a thing that I wanted for my birthday.

Now when I think about my birthday I want things that can’t be bought in a store or ordered from Amazon.

First, I want health for all of my friends and family.  Too many people that I love are suffering.  They are having to learn hard lessons and they are hurting.  It makes me sad because there isn’t a thing I can do. Expect love them. I wish you health and healing.

I want peace for those suffering from grief, personal and family problems and mental health problems.  I have been through all of these and they hurt!  If you haven’t yet experienced one of these problems you will.  And I wish you peace.  If you are now in the middle of one of these circumstances I wish for you to feel the love I have for you.  But more importantly I wish you to feel the love of Jesus Christ.  He is there listening and reaching out to you.  Turn to Him He is there and will lift and carry you.

Life is hard.  So many people around the world exist in circumstance that I can’t imagine.  I wish for the world to change.  I wish for war to end and poverty to be eradicated.  I wish I could hold every baby without a mother.  I wish I could save every child that is being hurt.  I wish life wasn’t so hard.

So for my birthday gift this year I ask you to “lift where you are”. (Dieter F. Uchtdorf)  Change your corner of the world.  It won’t solve the world’s problems but it will change one person’s life.  And really what better way to change the world than helping one person?

Annie Spratt photo credit

Choose for yourself!

So often when anxiety is active I feel like I don’t have a choice about what happens in my life.  It feels as if all of the sudden I am sucked into this horrible feeling of panic and despair and there isn’t a thing I can do it stop what is happening or to change it.

 

Last week I was in the middle of a panic attack and I was feeling so horrible about myself that I was falling back into something I thought I had more control over.  Not only did I have to deal with the panic but I also was dealing with horrible feelings about who I am as a person.   I begin to have such horrible self talk that the spiral that began with the panic becomes worse.  I am my own worst enemy.  This time though something stopped me from sliding to the bottom of this well known slide.

 

I realized that I had a choice.  The panic is going to come, I don’t always have control over that, but I do have control over my choices.  When I was a child and would fight with a sibling I would tell my mom that they made me so mad! She would say they didn’t make you made you choose to be mad.  I hated that because it just didn’t seem true (plus they didn’t get in trouble).  Now I understand, I can’t control what others do or how anxiety will come into my life.  But I do have control of my choices.

 

I can start to feel horrible and tell myself what a weak person I am because I am having ANOTHER panic attack when I should be stronger than this.  Or I can be gentle with myself and acknowledge that anxiety will probably be a part of my life for the rest of my life.  I can choose to be loving to myself and let the anxiety pass.  I can understand that having anxiety doesn’t define what type of person I am, I do that.  I can acknowledge the anxiety as something passing through my body it does not define who I am.  I get to choose who I am, what type of friend, mother, wife, sister or daughter I want to be.  I get to decide that from my choices.

 

And the really good part???  So do you!  Whatever challenge you are facing right now is not who you are.  It is part of your story but you get to write how it will turn out.  You get to decide if you will let it define how you react to life or if you will choose a different path.  It is all up to you!  And me!  For that I will always be grateful; I get to choose!

TV is the BOMB!


I love watching reality TV.  My husband hates it because he says it teaches other people to act that way in real life.  I know that even though it is called “reality”  they make a lot of it up for ratings.  But, anyway, it has been a guilty pleasure.

The last couple of weeks I have been busy and haven’t been watching as much TV.  Before, I would stay up past everyone else saying I just needed some time to myself.  My boys decided a few weeks ago that they wanted to start working out at the gym in the mornings and they needed a driver.  This meant that I needed to go to bed earlier so staying up late to watch TV was no longer an option.  (I didn’t want to leave my kids hanging at 5:30 am)

The last couple of weeks it has been amazing the things I have been able to accomplish.  And I felt so good; not only physically, because I did workout with them since I was at the gym anyway, but mentally as well.  Sunday night my hubby did an overnight work trip so I stayed up late and watched some TV.  Because I stayed up late I didn’t get up Monday morning to work out.  Then because I didn’t work out I decided I should just watch some more TV and relax.  This week is going to be another busy week and this morning was the only one I would have to myself. (That is how I justify my lazy TV time.)

However, as the morning went on I got more and more anxious.  My thoughts and feelings kept spiraling down and I felt horrible.  My energy level was so low I just kept sitting there even though I knew I needed to do other things.  Physically I was reverting to the anxiety ball that I go into when an anxiety attack is coming.  I knew it was because I was sitting around but I didn’t want to move.

Although I always knew intellectually that too much TV was not good for me I never made the connection to how much it affected my mental health until today. I just felt horrible and the longer I sat there the worse it got and the less I wanted to move.  It was a horrible downward spiral that I finally broke by getting up and moving.

Now I am going to be more careful with my TV time.  I need some suggestions for self care that will actually help me relax but not start a downward spiral.  What do you do when you know you need to take care of yourself?  Thank you in advance for your help!

 

Keep being brave!

Yesterday I did something super brave.

Next month we are running the Wasatch Ragnar and I have not been training.  I haven’t really worked out all winter.  Ragnar is a relay race of about 182 miles over the Wasatch mountains.  You have teams of 12 people, 6 in 2 vans and you take turns running.  Each person runs 3 “legs” of varying distance and difficulty. Even before looking at the legs I knew that I would be having a hard time because I haven’t been training.

Then I looked at what we would be running and really started to stress!  Not only do we deal with the ups and downs of the mountains but we have to handle the elevation.  The starting elevation is 4525 ft.  Here in Idaho where I live the elevation is only 2730 ft.  Then I looked at the distances and difficulty of the legs.  It looked like everything was hard!

I told my awesome husband last night that I new physically I was the weak link on our team.  It was awesome because my kids were there and they totally disagreed!  Yay for kids that have your back no matter what.  Anyway I told him that I should probably take the first leg which consists of 2 easy legs and a moderate leg.  I said that it wasn’t fair to give that to someone else that had been training just to make me feel better.

The reason that this was so hard for me to say is because I always want people to think the best of me.  I want to be seen as perfect and never making a mistake.  Yes you have read about that before.  I am working really hard to be honest with myself and with others about what I can and can’t do.  So even though I really want to be seen as super strong and able to handle anything I had to be honest in what I can do this time.

Besides it has been freeing to be honest.  To not pretend that I am something that I am not right now. Being honest allows so many more good things into life. There is room to learn and grow when you let go and be yourself!

Of course, this just made me want to work harder to be in shape for the Hood to Coast relay race we are running in August!

Be yourself!

Be Yourself,  Everyone else is already taken!

Oscar Wilde

 

Most of my life I have wanted to be someone else.  Someone not so sensitive, someone that everyone likes and someone that can just float through life without any worries.   That is so not me!!  I worry and I worry a lot.  If worry was an Olympic sport I am pretty sure I could take home gold!  I could take home the gold without even training!

Anyway the last few months I have come to realize that actually I really want to be me.  I want to the be the real me that isn’t worried about what other people think.  I have colored my hair some different colors and not been concerned when people  said they didn’t like it.  In fact, I was totally fine with them not liking my hair.

I have started really connecting with my family.  My boys can feel that I am more secure in myself and they are sharing more about what is going on in their lives.  Also, I have less “chatter” in my brain so I can really hear what they are telling me.

Twenty years ago I went on a mission for my church.  As we were getting off one of the flights a woman walked past me and handed me a note.  I have kept it all of these years because I felt she saw something in me that I didn’t see yet.  She wrote “I see in you a warrior of light, and truth, and compassion.  You are the essence of courage and strength.  You are clarity, and truth. There is a brightness in your being that radiates the joy that is you.”  That is me and that is you too!

Be you and I will be me because we are amazing the way we are!  Do we have challenges?  Yes! Are we perfect? No!  Are we loved anyway? Yes! Have an amazing day being you!

Photo credit: Aron Streibel

My brain lies to me!

It is true it does and I really hate the lies it tells.  It tells me that the only way that I can be worthy of love is if I am perfect.  The only way people will love me is if I figure out just what they want and deliver it to them.  These are the two biggest lies my brain tells me.

Because my brain lies to me I have had to learn how to recognize the lies.  How do I do this?  By paying attention to how my body feels.  When I start to feel my body slow down or getting scared I know that my brain is saying something that isn’t true.  Then I combat the negative thoughts my brain is telling me.

When my brain tells me that I have to be perfect to be loved;  I remind myself of all of the people that love me now.  I remind myself that I am learning which is what this life is all about not being perfect.  I remind myself that people have loved me through some very imperfect times.  When my brain tells me that I have to do everything I can to make others like me; I remind myself that I can’t make other people do or feel anything.  I remind myself that even during the time I couldn’t do anything for anyone else there were still people around me that loved me.

Does that change or stop the negative thoughts?  Not always not right away.  I have learned to be very persistent in combating the negative feelings.  Sometimes I have to go over and over the positive until my brain believes me.  And sometimes I have to check in with other people.  The negative only survives if I stay in the dark.  When I bring the negative thoughts to light in my mind or to other people it destroys the negative thoughts.

Don’t stay in the negative.  You and I are both here for a reason.  We have so much to offer and bring to the world.  Don’t listen to the lies your brain tells you!

 

 

This is My Brave

As many of you know a couple of weeks ago I shared my story of anxiety and depression through the Boise This is My Brave show.  A friend asked me how I felt about the show and why I was glad I did it.  All I could answer her at the time was because it was awesome.  I personally hate getting answers like that so I wanted to improve on my answer.  Here is the answer I wish I had given her.

First I loved it because I don’t feel so alone anymore.  After sharing my story at the rehearsals I had a couple of the other presenters tell me that what I described was exactly how they acted or felt.  It took pressure off knowing that I was not the only one that felt this way.  When I was in the middle of the anxiety I thought I was the only one that had these thoughts and feelings.  Knowing now that I am not is so freeing!

Second I loved it because the anxiety and depression are no longer a secret.  I feel free!  So many people have told me that they had no idea that I felt this way; that I also had such a confident air about me.  I was very good at hiding what I felt because I didn’t want others to know I felt weak and judge me for it.  The most surprising experience was after I had read my story to my husband and he said that he didn’t know I was so afraid of him dying.  I was shocked because I thought I had told him everything about all of my scary thoughts.  I guess I kept that one hidden because I didn’t want him to be worried when he was out on calls.

Third I loved it because I really enjoy being in front of a crowd and connecting with them.  I felt that I did a really good job expressing my feelings and helping the audience to feel what I felt.  I know it is kinda funny that someone that experiences anxiety likes to be in front of a crowd but it is true.

Lastly I loved it because I was able to show that mental illness is not something to be ashamed of.  My 15 year old son was able to attend the show and he said that it was very eye opening for him.  He was able to see that people with mental illnesses are not crazy or to be avoided.  He learned about other people and himself that night and I consider that I huge win!

Sharing my story with This is My Brave is one of the experiences I am most proud of in my life.  And I almost didn’t do it.  Thank you to Erin, Kristen and Jessica for producing the show and asking me to audition.  That is another thing I have learned.  Don’t wait to be asked to do something.  If there is an experience that you want go after it!!

Here is the video clip of my story from the show if you haven’t seen it.  Even if you have seen it watch it again because I love it!!