John Knopick: It's a little after seven now here in Columbia, Tennessee. Just got done putting our little guy down for the night. And I'm sitting here, and for the first time in a while, I'm actually having an evening where the doom and gloom clouds not only have not appeared, but don't even feel like they're going to appear in this case. This is the Honest Middle. I'm John Kenopic. Thank you very much for tuning in. Piggybacking off of what I spoke about last week with my progress and everything I've been through, ⁓ especially over the last three weeks to almost a month, ⁓ evenings had become exceptionally difficult, even more so than any other part of the day. Most of the time during the day, I was able to keep my brain distracted with work, with other activities. It was the weekend, things like that. But the moment we got to right around the same period, around like four, five, six o'clock at night. ⁓ this wave of doom and gloom just started to overtake me. I started feeling blah, my stomach was upset. When it was really when the panic and everything was at its core height level of ⁓ catastrophicness, I was scared to go to sleep at night. So much so that one of the nights, ⁓ right after everything started, I actually ended up calling nine eight eight, not because I had any intentions of self-harm or anything like that, but because I just didn't know who to talk to to try to help me get through that that period that I was in where I was literally scared to close my eyes every night. I had my wife there, of course, ⁓ and my son was asleep, but I really felt like I was just scared in levels I'd never been scared before. And to that end, my brain had learned to anticipate, okay, it's nighttime. ⁓ we're getting ready to put him down. Where are the clouds? When are the clouds gonna roll in? How bad's the storm gonna be tonight? Will I be able to fall asleep? Will I be scared to fall asleep? What's what's going to happen? ⁓ my my senses, my spidey senses, ⁓ if you will, ⁓ became exceptionally hyper-aware. And to this point they still are. But thankfully, since I've started on my new regimen of medicine things and spoke with a new psychiatrist, those doom and gloom clouds have lessened. They're still appearing, but they're not nearly as frequent as they have been. But that being said, days are ⁓ a ⁓ crapshoot, if you will. Like yesterday, Friday was a very up and down roller coaster type of day where I was I had some good moments. I had some not so good moments in and then last night I had my doom and gloom again and I was feeling like okay You know, again, as I had mentioned, I thought everything was fine. I thought that the medicine was going to be that shield. But then when it didn't happen last night, I was like, okay, maybe this isn't supposed to work the way I thought it was supposed to be. I was expecting the medicine to be dramatic. I was expecting, okay, the moment I start pumping this into my system, everything is gonna change. I'm gonna have this this massive army there to protect me in the morning and in the afternoon. I won't fear sleep anymore. I'll be able to sleep normal. Everything is going to be good. The doom and gloom clouds are going to be vaporized every time they try to roll in. And it didn't happen that way. And again, this is something I'd never been through before. And so I didn't really know what to expect. ⁓ when I first started the medication the four days ago, it was I was feeling really good. I was like, this is like feelings I hadn't felt in a while. Like my nervous system finally was able to stand down. But It was still hyper aware. So the smallest little thing it was thinking, ⁓ no, something's wrong. Something else is wrong. And then yesterday I had my yo-yo stuff. And I unfortunately was under the assumption of feeling like once I had the new medication in, I had the game plan set, I had my Avengers team, if you will, in place to help me get through things mentally, medication-wise, emotionally, et cetera. I was like, okay, I'm back. You know, start as I start this new medicine. It's gonna be the old me, and obviously, as we know, that could not have been further from the truth. things have gotten better, ⁓ more sustainable day by day. ⁓ there's still a lot of a lot of problems ⁓ that go on throughout the day. It tends to be when my my mind is is idle. that's when my brain likes to try to stir things up. Used to be before all of the trauma and everything happened, when I was idle, my brain was just idle. It didn't like sitting idle when I'm on a work ⁓ environment, but when I'm at home and when I'm outside of work, it doesn't mind that idleness. It doesn't mind being a little stagnant and a little unwinding, a little just flat. not flat in a bad way, just flat in a not constantly going a hundred miles a minute way like I do when I'm at work. ⁓ so, you know, there's there's something that, you know, to me, it made me think, you know, maybe progress is sometimes should be considered Realizing that you forgot to be afraid rather than just expecting things to be really good every day. Like, yeah, I got this new medicine. It's gonna be everything's gonna be unicorns and roses and candy and yeah, yeah, yeah. Every day. But it maybe progress is actually I've you know, didn't have a bad day. Not that I was ⁓ trying to focus on having a thinking that I was gonna have an amazing day, but instead I got so distracted or the medicine helped. mitigate things to the point where I forgot to be afraid. I forgot to be hyper-aware. I forgot to worry about what the night was going to be like. And I just flowed through the day up until the point where I closed my eyes at night. You know, because there's still it to this point, because it's still the new the medicine is still really new and I'm still less than a month out from all of the trauma that I endured. My brain is still going, don't get too excited. You know, it I have come to the realization Through my forty-six years on this planet, at least in my life, that when you try to get comfortable, when you try to feel like you're in a good place, at least from my perspective, the universe had a way of taking a massive manure dump on that parade, on that happiness, and making you realize, hey, you can't feel comfortable because something is always gonna come along to ruin it. And then now going through what I've gone through and what I'm dealing with, now rather than thinking, okay, everything's crashing down around me, my brain is now trying to say, hey, rather than, you know, just accepting the manure as it drops, how about finding a way to get through it, to overcome it, to ride out that disgusting wave, to to create an umbrella. So yeah, you're still gonna you're still gonna feel it, but you're gonna get through it a lot faster. And you're gonna progress a lot quicker through it, you know, because to me, I know that I'll never there'll never be a spot where I'll never feel anxiety again. It's not gonna happen. Everybody goes through anxiety. If you say you've never been and you've never had an anxious moment or gone through anxiety in your life, you're kidding yourself. Because we all have. And I have to realize that now there are going to be good days and they're gonna be dad bad days. I remember the days prior to everything happening where I was able to just flow through day after day. I got excited about things in the future. Falling asleep was no problem. Staying asleep was easy. You know, I I I had those anxious moments, things popped up here and there, but they were easily manageable. But then when the trauma and everything happened, that all changed. That all became something completely different. It became an entirely new world. And I had to teach my brain. And I'm still teaching my brain and my emotional state and my nervous system how to react, brace, and overcome it as quickly as possible. ⁓ and to try to find a way to make anxiety gain less territory over my space. Because over the last month, anxiety had and panic and fear has run rampant. It has had the rule of the roost. And that's something that I will not. live with or will not just accept it as normalcy because it shouldn't be that way. And no one should have to live in a constant state of anxiety, a constant state of fear. And again, you know, waves are always gonna happen. They will. I just have to find a way. We just have to find a way when those I when those waves hit us or when we see those storm clouds on coming down the pike. Brace yourself. Find ways, teach yourself ways to be able to overcome them. So that way you're training your brain to say, okay, you know, when these come up, I can I can take solace in the fact that I've been through this before. I've handled these situations before. Here's how I handled them previously. Maybe I should try the same thing. If it worked before, why wouldn't it work now? Or if it's working but not quite the way I want it to, make adjustments. Life is always about adjusting. Life is always evolving. There's never gonna be a perfect solution to pretty much anything, especially when it comes to anxiety and mental health and emotions and just living life all together. You know, that, you know, I'm I'm still early in this. I know there's probably a lot of you out there that are gonna be listening to this that have probably been through this months, years, long time. And you're still struggling. You're still trying to maneuver things day after day. And I and I applaud you. For being able to continue to fight that fight. And I want you to be able to tell me, give me feedback. Let me know how you handle your anxiety or your stress or how you ride the waves out when they come in. I I'm open to that because to me, this, like I said, this is therapy. This is therapeutic, not just for me, but for everybody who's listening and and taking the time to hear what I have to say and hear about my experiences. And I want to hear about your experiences too. I want to know what you've gone through because we can help each other in this space. It's it's something where it's not just going to be me talking about my experiences. Eventually I want to talk about other people's experiences too and give you guys your flowers. Even if you want to be anonymous, totally anonymous, no problem at all. I still want to give you your flowers for the way you've overcome things. So then maybe I could give those feedback and those tips out to the world, and maybe that can help somebody who's struggling. That's what I wanna do. I wanna able to help everybody get through all of the stuff that you're dealing with as easily and as less traumatic as possible. Because the the easier things are for us to overcome, the greater our days will be as they go along. So tonight, as I said, I'm sitting here in my office, my little one is asleep, literally outside of the wall from where I'm at right now. I'm recording this this second episode and just sitting here, I'm realizing that I'm not afraid of what tonight's gonna feel like. Again, as I said, it's for the first time in quite a while. I'm not afraid. I'm not concerned. I don't see any clouds on the horizon, at least for tonight. Again, tomorrow could be totally different. We go day after day, go day by day. But I like this feeling, you know, and Part of me thinks, you know, maybe I've been waiting for s the progress to make some big announcement or some big reveal, like da-da-da-da, I'm here. And, you know, maybe it's just been rather than saying there's gonna be one big explosion and there's there's the there's the progress. Instead, it's just little moments. It's just these little mini wins, you know, rather than okay, I had storm clouds all afternoon. Maybe then the next day is like I maybe I had storm clouds for only like a couple hours. And then the next day, next few days, I only have storm clouds maybe for an hour. Just these little improvements, these little things where you see yourself in a better spot by the end of the night than you were the previous nights. That to me are wins. So it's not something that's going to be huge. It's not something that's going to be it's gonna blast you in the face. It's going to be little things here or there. You just have to catch them. You have to sense and realize hey. This is a mini victory. I gotta log this. I gotta remember this. Or hey, I got through that wave really quick. How did I do that? I need to remember. I have to drop this down. I need to record it. I need to say something so I can remember for next time something like this similar happens. This is how I went over it and how how I got through it. Now, as I said, I don't know what tomorrow is gonna look like. Can't tell you. I don't have a I don't have a DeLorean with a cop Mr. Coffee Maker on the back. I don't have a hot tub time machine. I have I have no crystal ball. I have no way of knowing what tomorrow's gonna look like. That's and again, that's kind of the entire in point of this show of the honest middle. But I will say tonight feels better. I'm happy. I've had a really good day, solid day all around. And what I've been doing is I've been journaling every single day, starting with yesterday with the with the down period and recapping how things went. And today has been a complete 180 of what yesterday was. Today I I played in the pool with my wife and my son, went to a trampoline park, we played some games, we relaxed, we had a good dinner. It all went really well. And you know, to me, instead of questioning and worrying about whether or not this will last and if it's gonna become a a a daily thing going forward, I think I'm just gonna let myself have tonight. to embrace it for what it is and embrace it for what how it's been. So as I said, keep pulling, keep pushing forward, keep fighting the good fight. Give me your give me your feedback to this episode. Let me know how you've overcome the things. Let me know what you're struggling with. Let's let's help each other navigate this world. Let's help each other work things out. Let's get us all back onto that path where we can just Live every day without that fear and anxiety gripping us because it it has no business doing that. I'm John Kanopic. This is the honest middle. We'll keep figuring it out together. See you next time.