Anxiety

I think my anxiety stems from when I had my first baby with the pressure to breastfeed exclusively.  My firstborn was five weeks early and lacked the sucking reflex at his birth.  He spent two weeks in the NICU learning to suck so that we could bring him home and be able to feed him without a tube through his nose, which was how he got his food the first weeks of life.  I pumped every four hours on the dot for the first two weeks and took all the breastmilk to the NICU, where it was kept in the refrigerator and used for his feedings.  I went to feed him every eight hours and when I did, they would have him latch on to me to try and suck but he would still get fed through the tube in his nose during that time, so he associated sucking with food.  When he was released, I went to a lactation consultant because I had difficulty with latching and with knowing he was getting enough. He was always crying and rooting around; feedings took 45 minutes to an hour and then an hour after that, he would be hungry again.  I was already stressed out because he'd been born early and in the NICU.  I continued pumping in between feedings, hoping that would increase my supply.  I will say, my breastmilk never looked like the milk I've seen stored in other nursing mamas' fridges. It never had that lathery cream at the top and it always had a yellowish tinge--it was never white.  That's how it was with all seven of my babies too.  I liked to say that my kids got skim milk because that's what  my body made and that's probably why they were never satisfied with my milk. 

So at about four months, when I ran out of frozen pumped milk and became too exhausted to continue the pumping/feeding cycle, I gave up and fed him formula.  He started to sleep well; I started to sleep well, and he was healthy and growing.  But we were on WIC, and every time I went to pick up the vouchers, I would get lectured about how "breast is best" and I should have tried harder to breastfeed.  I didn't try hard enough.

To make a longer story short, I ended up nursing the first one to four months with all of my babies and then switching to formula.  I truly don't know if it's because my milk was  never very fatty (it certainly never looked right when I pumped) or because my babies didn't latch right, or because I just didn't try hard enough, often something I was told by other nursing moms--"you just need to try harder"--"it's worth the sacrifice to give your baby the best" and so forth.  I really feel that if I wasn't constantly being bombarded with the notion that I didn't try hard enough that perhaps I wouldn't have felt such great anxiety and feelings of failure over breastfeeding.  Even now, with my youngest child a four-year-old, if people bring up the breast vs. formula debate, I cringe inside and hope that no other mothers feel the huge amounts of anxiety over it that I felt.

But this has bled into all other areas of my life.  I simply don't try hard enough. I had a chat with a close relative about how I constantly feel anxiety over literally everything in my life and she told me I just needed to learn to let go of things.  I believe that is true, but I don't know how to do it.  How do you know when you have tried everything in your power and now you should just let go and turn it over to God?  Or do you still keep trying?  It's the trying part that gives me anxiety, but then not trying also gives me anxiety. 

A current example:  we are going through a pandemic right now.  I haven't been able to teach piano lessons or preschool since it began, thereby accumulating a loss of nearly $3000 over the course of two months (I didn't suffer a loss in March because I simply told my clients that I was unable to make any refunds due to cancellations).  My husband has been able to work, but because he is not bringing in the sales like usual, he isn't making his normal amount either, and he has lost nearly $1500 over the course of the last three months.  So together, we have had a lower income of $4500 over three months (March, April, May).  Fortunately, we had received an income tax return just before it all began and then we benefited from the stimulus package and received money from that too, so for now, we are okay.  But if this continues into fall and I cannot teach piano or preschool, and my husband's income is still dwindling, we are in big trouble. 

I tried at first to do virtual piano lessons.  It was a bit of a disaster.  It's hard enough keeping kids out of the room while I'm teaching piano lessons, but with virtual lessons, having kids walk in and out was a complete distraction, more so than them walking by during real life lessons.  Then there is the fact that most of my students are beginners, to the point where they still need me to fashion their hands in the correct playing position and reposition them onto the correct keys multiple times throughout a lesson.  I found that it was nearly impossible to do that through a screen.  I'd tell them they needed to move their hands one way or the other and they just wouldn't get it.  Then the parent overhearing would come in and try to get them to do it and it just ended up being the parent lecturing the kid while I awkwardly waited on the video and by the time 30 minutes was up, we had accomplished almost nothing.  My more advanced students did much better, but after a couple weeks, the parents decided they needed a break because doing online school was already causing too much stress.  I tried continuing preschool online too, delivering lessons via video and emails to the parents, complete with pictures and pdfs of all the work.  But they didn't want to do it either, and continue to pay for it. 

So here's my dilemma.  Do I keep trying to do these virtual type lessons in the fall if that's what the government stipulates with social distancing?   I was already feeling like a huge failure at preschool, having hard time advertising and bringing in students.  This next year is to be my last year even doing preschool.  So far I only have one student committed.  I need at least four more to make it worth my time.  So do I keep trying to do preschool and piano lessons?  Do I look for another job?  Or do I just not worry about it and "put it in God's hands" and hope something comes about that helps us?  I can't let go, but instead of solving anything, I wring my hands and stand there not knowing what course of action to take.  I just don't know what to do. 

And this is how it is with all other areas of my life.  I do this with parenting.  Should I be stricter or am I being too strict?  Why are my kids not more self-motivated to set goals and do things?  How can I help them with this?  Can I even help them with this?  Have I failed because I haven't set high enough expectations?

And there are the things we haven't been able to do for our kids and I realize time is slipping away and there is only so much time left with them before they're grown, so we have to squeeze in all the trips and activities, etc., but we don't have the money to do it, so how do we do it without overspending and...and...and....

And there is church.  I want to have a calling; I  do.  But every calling I've been asked to do is something I dread.  I dread having to lead the music in Sacrament meeting.  I dreaded having to plan Relief Society activities and set up for them (being neither crafty, nor socially successful, this was torturous for me).  I want to go back to church but I don't. 

I just feel like with everything, I don't know how to let go or what I can even let go of.  It's the decision-making that leaves me the most paralyzed, actually.  I feel like I do not have a track record of making good decisions or trying hard enough to make things happen before making a different decision.  So I'm afraid of proceeding forward with anything because I just know I'll mess it all up. 

And that's why I have terrible anxiety that I can't seem to find any way of alleviating.  I don't know what to do.  I can't even make a decision because I'm not sure what I'm even choosing between, and if I do know what I'm choosing between, the pros and cons are too equal and I can't make a decision.