Hi Mark
I feel for you so much while you face the challenges of your mum going away for a few days at a time and the anxiety you experience.
It sounds like your mum may have worked out how to manage her stress or anxiety, amongst other emotions. Having a break from what leads her to feel such emotions may mean she returns refreshed with some sense of relief. I'm wondering how long it took her to work out that this form of management is what serves her best. I'm also wondering about what would serve you.
While walking around the block once or twice a day may serve you to some degree, just while you're out of the house, are there any other things in the way of skill development you can think of or get a feel for? When I say 'get a feel for', most often we'll be able to feel or sense what may work and what simply won't work at all. A couple of examples that come to mind involve 1)developing a sense of sound and 2)developing a sense of imagination. Not sure whether you have access to a good set of speakers, headphones or ear pods but there can be a big difference between feeling the sound the comes from an average pair compared to a good pair. Whether the music we feel is high energy and exciting or it's more of a seriously peaceful kind of vibe, what sound does to the body can be incredible. Could be worth a bit of a Google research.
Developing a sense of imagination may sound simple but sometimes it's far from simple. When what stresses or depresses us keeps pulling us out of our imagination, the challenge comes down to refocusing. While offering an example of that in my own life, I consider how much I relied on my brilliant mum and her imagination before she passed away last year. Often she would lead me to imagine a solution to a challenge or a different way forward. While grief kept pulling me out of trying to imagine a way forward for myself, refocusing away from the grief and more into seeing the way forward is what has helped lessen the grief quite a lot. It took a lot of practice, constantly shifting focus away from the grief and more into emotions that were going to serve me. Grief can feel like a powerful magnet, attracting our attention so strongly.
While it's been some years since I relied on alcohol to serve me emotionally, I can relate to where you're coming from. In speaking with a lot of ex emotional drinkers, we all pretty much agree on the fact that alcohol gets in the way of skill development. To develop a sense of peace, a sense of excitement, a sense of optimism, a sense of relief etc etc is what leads to relying on those skills when we need them in life. With drinking, there's no need to develop such skills. So, when we stop drinking, we suffer through a lack of skills. As a 56yo gal, I still suffer to some degree through a lack of social skills because I relied on social drinking for so many years. Never too late to learn😊. Can you think of or get a feel for any particular skill or ability you want to develop and perhaps practice while your mum's away? Feeling that time as a time of self development rather than just a time of sadness and stress could be a different way of experiencing it.
