On Not Being Okay

 

Last week I posted on Facebook that I was not okay. I am grateful for all the friends and family members who checked in on me—called, sent a text, sent a private message, sent chocolate…. Okay, no one sent chocolate, but getting those check-in messages was just as good. Better, actually.

Here’s what was going on:

I felt overwhelmed.

When I feel overwhelmed, it’s because things feel like they are spiraling out of my control.

When I begin to lose control over the order of my life—the daily routine, the peace and quiet of the household, the general welfare of my dog and cat—my anxiety begins to skyrocket.

When my anxiety skyrockets, I become paralyzed. I find myself functioning robotically to take care of the necessary things—pet care, etc—then becoming immobilized and simply sitting for hours at a time, heart pounding, breath shallow.

This anxiety is rooted in childhood trauma.

I was an extremely sensitive child. (I still am that child.) And I was shamed by my parents for being so. I’m not trying to vilify them here; they thought that telling me to “stop crying" and "stop being so sensitive” and making fun of me for doing so would help toughen me up to deal with the real world outside. What it actually did was further isolate me, make me feel that my being “different” from others was wrong or bad, something I should be ashamed of choosing for myself. And all of that led me to become quiet and shut down… for which I was further shamed.

I learned to speak only when I absolutely had to. I learned to hang in the background, not assert myself. I learned to be invisible.

The more I controlled these things, the safer I felt. The calmer I felt. In those days, the calmest I ever felt was on Saturday mornings, leaving the house when everyone was sleeping, riding my bike around the quiet neighborhood in the hush of early morning. I was a little girl out alone, and I felt safest there. (You’re already nodding your head if you know me well—this is me now on a hike; I feel safest there.)

Until I started seeing a therapist last year, I was wholly unaware of what caused my anxiety. I mean, when I was feeling anxious, I could generally track it back to what triggered it, but I had no idea why it kept resurfacing. I kept confusing anxiety with fear. It’s the same autonomic response, right? Rapid heart rate. Shallow breathing. But I am not a fearful person.

One day my therapist said, “So, as long as you can control things in your life—your environment, your routine, your interaction with people—you feel safe. Because when you were a child and a teenager, you were being bombarded with stimuli that traumatized you, and you had no control over it. You couldn’t advocate for yourself, and you had no adult advocate. So you lived with trauma. Now, you keep that trauma at bay by creating an environment in which you are in control.”

Boy howdy.

Yes, I understand—as I discussed with my therapist—that we cannot control everything that happens in our lives. Some weeks are like last week—things breaking, service people in the house to fix things, financial worries, pet worries, pressure from others to “just make a decision,” the hopeless desire to never let anyone down….

Last week was a perfect storm of unpleasant events happening. So I felt out of control of my life. So the anxiety swooshed back in hard like a tsunami.

So what did I do? I rode it out. I saw it coming on the horizon and I ran for higher ground. I didn’t quite outrun it, but some folks were close by with life preservers and ropes and that-feeling-you-get-when-you-eat-chocolate, and I survived it.

For a while, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. But the truth is, I just had to be reminded: “Breathe, Kay.” I did. I’m back. I’m okay now. If you’re not, you can always call me. I have time for you. I can find a life preserver. Maybe even some chocolate.