Tag

coping

Stream of consciousness

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No edits, no beautifully-crafted blog post, just honest snippets of thoughts as they are:

—

I am having a hard time. Everyone’s having a hard time. I am not unique and yet I am. Everyone’s circumstances are different and yet everyone’s circumstances are the same.

—

I go through periods of positivity and gratitude and periods of deep despair and anxiety. Sometimes within a day or even an hour. I try so hard to be upbeat and positive for the girls, but sometimes it’s all too much and I can’t. And then I kind of hate myself for it.

—

I never went back to work after maternity leave, because school closed. Instead, I transitioned from maternity leave to Working Full Time while Parenting Full Time. This is an impossible situation, and I am well-aware I’m not the only one in it. I miss my students, my coworkers, my work routine, my normalcy.

—

I feel horrible at my job when I can’t answer emails or get things done because I’m with my kids. I feel horrible as a mother when I can’t give my kids my undivided attention because I have to get work done. I feel horrible as a wife when I have no energy left at the end of the day or when I take out my frustrations on my husband.

—

This is not a pity party.

—

My friend and I talk about this so much: you need to find a balance between acknowledging your feelings about the situation, along with focusing on your privilege, but without letting knowledge of your privilege incite self-judgment for having a hard time.

It’s a fucking battle every second of every day.

This is all so hard.

And.

I am so lucky and privileged.

Feel your feelings with awareness but without judgment.

—

But the judgment comes because who am I to be frustrated that there are so many dishes and so much laundry and so much stress and so many temper tantrums and diapers and so much work to do when there are people with actual problems I am so privileged I am such a brat stop whining stop complaining I’m a horrible human.

—

My biggest fears as a child were that something could happen that could cause the world to end or loved ones to die. Everyone told me those were just unfounded fears.

They’re no longer irrational fears.

—

Getting outside helps. I don’t even need warm spring days (though that would be heavenly), but I need sun. I need to get Maya outside and I need to be outside.

I feel the best when we are outside and I see the trees, hear the birds, dig in the dirt, and see that nature is continuing on, see that there’s a world out there.

The days that I wake up to gray and rain my heart sinks and I can’t breathe again.

—

I am having an increase in food and body thoughts.

—

It feels like all I do is pick up toys, wash dishes, cook, and clean. Nurse, play, parent, work. Lather, rinse, repeat.

—

It has been really nice reconnecting with old friends.

—

I feel so worried for people’s mental health after this trauma. Because this IS a trauma, for so many.

—

My heart breaks for Maya on a daily basis. She is old enough to understand something is wrong and different but not old enough to understand why. She is more than fine, she is so privileged and lucky and FINE. And yet. She is sad and confused and her life has been completely shaken up and I hate that. She asks for her friends and school and to please go somewhere, Mama, and when will everywhere stop being closed? I don’t want this to be her life but I know she’s fine but I also don’t like it.

Again. Who am I to complain.

—

I’m tired. Every minute of every day. Maybe it would help if Maggie would sleep well at night. Maybe it wouldn’t matter.

—

I think the only way anyone can survive this is for us to all share our thoughts and feelings. It has been so nice having multiple people reach out and share what’s going on for them. I think it’s making people more emotionally-aware and looking to connect on a emotional level where maybe they hadn’t in the past.

—

Often times in my life I’ve felt alone in my anxieties and worries and obsessive thinking and despair at things. I no longer feel alone because everyone else is feeling it, too. Which makes me sad, and also grateful.

—

I am profoundly grateful for social media as a means for connecting with people during this.

—

Will I ever feel safe in the world again, even when we are able to go back to a quasi “normal”? Will the anxiety I have around getting sick, that I had before this even started, ever go away? Will my children live the lives I am hoping for them? Will we all be okay?

—

Now. Right now. One moment. One breath. Try. Try. Try.

Lessons learned. Again.

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You know how when there’s a leak in your house you usually fix it right away, but sometimes you just ignore it? Because it’s really not doing that much damage and it’s probably only leaking because it’s raining and it’s going to stop raining eventually.

Right. Except.

The thing is, you don’t know when it’s going to stop raining. Or when it’s going to start raining again. And how hard. Because despite your best efforts, and the best predictions and forecasts, sometimes storms just come. And sometimes they come out of nowhere, and you haven’t fixed the leak, and it makes an even bigger mess.

And then you have to figure out how to fix the damage from the leak. There’s no point in wasting time wishing you had fixed it earlier. Hindsight is 20-20 and all you can do is deal with what you have in front of you.

So you get mad at yourself, and you complain, and maybe you cry, but then you do the Next Right Thing. You call the repairman, and tell them that even if their schedule is crazy, you need to be fit in. And you don’t, you can’t, feel bad about it, because that’s their job. And you have to fix the damage to your house. No amount of avoidance or wishing is going to make it go away.

And you remind yourself: next time, for the love of all things holy, don’t ignore the leak. No matter how tempting avoidance is, remember that the likelihood of the leak just stopping is slim to none. Patch it. Fix it. Face it. Call the repairman. Well before the damage occurs.

I’ll take it under advisement.

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You know how sometimes someone gives you a thought or anecdote and you appreciate it, but move on, but sometimes someone gives you a random thought or idea and it REALLY sticks and kind of changes everything for the better?

This is that.

Several months ago, I sat in a therapy session discussing a really frustrating pattern I had been having lately.

“I KNOW it’s not a big deal if I wake up really anxious or really down,” I said. “But a part in me kind of panics and is like Oh my god this is a really big deal because what if you don’t ever feel better and what if this lasts forever and how will you ever get things done and be a good wife and be a good mother some day and we have to worry about this and solve it right away and only focus on this.”

“Well,” she responded. “It sounds like your Self is trying to say, ‘It’s okay, don’t worry’. But this other part of you is trying to protect you by ensuring you think about each possible horrible outcome. And it’s very sweet of that part to do so. The problem is, it’s creating fires where they don’t exist, and trying to solve a non-existent problem in a very unhelpful way.”

“YES!” I agreed. “Exactly. And my Self believes all those things: I can be where I am, feelings come and go, this moment is just this moment, but then I start to worry and spin and before I know it, I’ve only been awake for ten minutes and I’ve already come to all these dramatic conclusions about the probability of how successful I’ll be in my life and what the hell is up with that?”

“So, let’s acknowledge that little panicky part,” she said. “Because really, it has good intentions. It’s trying to protect you. But you don’t really need its constant chatter. So allow it to speak, hear what it has to say, and humor it. Respond to it and say, ‘Thank you for your concern. I’ll take it under advisement.’ It’s up to you if you actually take its content to heart and spend the rest of the day pouring over the worries it brought to the table. But this way it’ll be happy, because it got heard, and your Self is still the one making the decisions and calling the shots, so it’s a win-win.”

I loved it.

And I’ve been doing it constantly. Rather than getting upset when I have a thought, or a worry, or a fear, rather than immediately following its instructions (We need to worry about x, panic about y, analyze z) I calmly listen to the suggestion. Because after all, it’s a part of me. And has anyone really had success with internal hatred?

(Years ago, in the midst of a panic attack, I said to a friend, What the f***! I shouldn’t be feeling this way! I just need to snap out of it, this is so stupid!!  She responded with her loving sarcasm: Ohhh, so you’re going to berate yourself out of a panic attack? Yeah, let me know how that goes. Right. Point taken.)

So anyway, yes, I listen. And then I play the role of Leader of the Council Board, and I acknowledge it. Telling it, “Thank you for your concern. I’ll take it under advisement.”

Only, usually, I don’t spend any more time on it than just that. And I move on. Because I am the leader, and I call the shots, and while I am an excellent listener, I certainly don’t have to take all of the suggestions I am given.

Not anymore.

A year of grief

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One year ago today, my mom called to tell me that my grandpa passed away. The month before that had been spent with grenades and bombs and tsunamis as the information had come in – my healthy grandpa was sick, my healthy grandpa had a mass, my healthy grandpa had cancer, my healthy grandpa was going to die within the year, my healthy grandpa was going to die in a few weeks.

We went down to Florida during that month, for one day, to say goodbye, when the call had come in: “If you want to see him one last time, you need to go. Now.” And we did – and I put on a smile the entire day. Trying to enjoy my time with him. Trying to be strong for my Gram. Trying not to fall apart when he looked me in the eye and said, “This is a bad way to go out, kid.” Trying to not die inside when he told us he wished he could be at our wedding. Trying.

And I never processed it. Because two days later was Thanksgiving. And I spent the day putting on a smile. Yes, it was so great to see him. Yes, we’re so happy we went. Yes, it was so meaningful. 

A week later he died. Four days later was the funeral. And six days later was my baby cousin’s Bat Mitzvah. Where, yes, I spent the day putting on a smile. How lovely it is that we can celebrate such a happy occasion. Thank goodness for the happy times. 

Do we sense a theme?

For those next few months, I certainly grieved. But not for myself. My tears, my anxieties, my depressions, my worries, were spent on my grandma and my mom. I cried for my mom, who lost her dad. I sobbed for my gram, who lost her husband. I worried about my gram being alone. I had a pit in my stomach every time I imagined her waking up alone, eating breakfast alone, going to bed alone.

And I didn’t really speak about it. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know how to say it. So it was buried.

And then I was about to get married. And there were seven zillion things to do each day, and I was focused in on that. And I got married, and it was beautiful, and magical, and incredible, and the honeymoon was a fairy tale.

But then things quieted down, a month or two passed, and life calmed down.

And I noticed that I started crying more. And I noticed that my chest constricted and my stomach convulsed each time I called my Gram because I knew I would feel her pain and feel her loss and I was so worried about her and sad for her and I just couldn’t bear it.

I noticed that I felt like I had been punched in the stomach each time I looked at our wedding photos and Grandpa wasn’t in them.

I noticed that in walking around my apartment, I averted my eyes from Grandpa’s paintings on the walls.

I noticed that my voice became flat. That I lost my appetite. That I just cried, a lot.

And by early September, when Rosh Hashanah was around the corner, when in every year past I had felt elated and excited at the thought of Gram and Grandpa coming to celebrate our New Year – I felt dread. Despair. I couldn’t bear the thought that she was coming alone.

What is wrong with you, I chided myself. People lose people all the time. They cope and they deal. It’s been more than six months and you should be coping a lot better now. I then helpfully added, He was only your grandpa. My mom and her sisters lost their father. Gram lost her husband. I have no right to be as upset as I am. And to clinch it, I oh-so-kindly reminded myself, I have friends who have lost their moms or dads this year. They have a right to be upset, but I don’t. Just stop it.

And so, for more reasons and a more complicated back story than is necessary to get into here, I decided it was time to do something about it.

I spent each week crying, sobbing, as we processed the traumatic memories. Florida. Thanksgiving. Rosh Hashanah.

I sobbed, as I told her, “I spent the last year either pushing it down, or grieving for my mom and my aunts and my Gram. But I never grieved for myself, and I’m just so sad, so devastated, so heartbroken that I lost my grandpa. I just miss him, and I am so sad that he’s gone.”

And it got a little easier. I got to a point where I could talk about him, think about him, think about Gram, talk to Gram, without falling apart. But time is funny, and so just a few short weeks later, here we are. We had Thanksgiving without him. And today is the one year anniversary of his passing.

And so now I’m crying more often, sobbing a bit harder. And a year later, it hasn’t really gotten any easier. But I’ve learned:

This is grief. There is no rule book. There is no hierarchy. I have every right to feel however I feel. If I have days where I cry, that’s okay. If I have days where I’m just down, that’s okay. If I have days where I feel fine, that’s okay, too. I don’t have to justify my grief, or the form it takes. It might get easier, it might get harder. And I need to ride that wave – and be where I am. Without judgement, and instead, with kindness, acceptance, and compassion.

The elf and her protector

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One day, when the elf was a very young girl, she was out in the garden with the toads. Other creatures strolled about, including a garden nymph, watering a moonbeam lily nearby. The elf didn’t seem to want to play the usual games, and one of the toads asked her why.  The nymph watched the little elf pause, think, and open her mouth.

But just as soon as she had opened her mouth, she closed it.

For a protector had appeared and stopped them from going any further.

“Whoa, don’t do that!” it exclaimed. “If you let those words out, you can’t get them back. If you talk about it and say it, then you’ll worry people. And then they’ll feel sad about the words you spoke. And then you’ll feel even worse. So – let me hold onto your words. I’ll keep them safe right here, in this safe little nook between your chest and your throat. And then you won’t worry anyone, you won’t burden anyone, and you won’t have to worry either.”

Well, the little elf thought this was a great idea. She appreciated this protector looking out for her best interests, for watching out for her.

“Okay,” she happily agreed, and skipped away.

From then on, she had a solution. Any time those silly words wanted to escape out her mouth, words that would cause her friends and family sadness and anguish, her protector caught them and held them for her.

It was perfect.

—

Years later, the elf had constant tightness in her throat, pressure and heaviness in her chest. No herbs or elixer seemed to make it go away, and she feared that she was very, very ill.

One day out in the garden, that same nymph from years ago was tending to plants, fertilizing the mintberry plants. She noticed the elf laying in the hammock, and went up to her, asking her how she was doing.

When the elf replied, “I’m afraid I am not well,” the nymph knew it was time to speak the suspicion she had carried for so many years.

“Dear elf,” the nymph began. “I wonder – does that protector still live in that space between your chest and your throat?”

“Why yes, of course,” the elf replied, surprised.

“I find it curious,” the nymph continued, cautiously, “that this illness which has befallen you is occurring in the same spot as where your protector has held all of your many, many words, over the years.”

The elf listened, curious.

“You see, dear elf, I can’t help but wonder if there is simply not enough space for all of your words anymore. If maybe your pain is the words trying to get out, because they are crowded and in pain.” the nymph added.

“I just don’t see how that could be,” the elf said. “My protector assured me that this would protect me from the things I fear the most. The protector would never had lied.”

“Oh, of that I have no doubt,” the nymph reassured. “Protectors never lie, though I must tell you that over time they become very stubborn. Of course, sweet elf, it’s all out of love and care. But I do believe that now, your protector needs to be told that its services are no longer needed. That you will continue to become more and more ill if it does not begin to let the words through.”

“I’m afraid,” the elf told the nymph. “If the words come out, people will hear them. I will never get them back. And isn’t it safer to keep them hidden in their spot?”

“What’s the price of safer?” the nymph questioned. “I watch you day after day from my spot with the plants in our garden, and the price of ‘safer’ seems to be your health. I believe it’s worth a risk to save your life. And your friends, the toads and the nymphs and the fairies – they’ve been waiting, for years, to hear the words that your protector has hidden.”

The elf heard what the nymph was telling her. She knew that the nymph was right. She spoke to her protector that very night. “Oh, dear protector, I need to thank you,” she told it. “You did what you thought was right – and maybe when I was just a little girl, it was right. But it’s no longer working, for it’s making me very, very ill. Dear protector, I am not upset with you. I am grateful to how you’ve looked over me all of these years. But it’s time for you to go. And I will be brave. And I will know that all of my words – even the loud and hard and scary and deep ones – they will all be greeted warmly by the fairies and toads and nymphs. So, my dear protector – goodbye.”

And it left.

And that next morning, out in the garden, while drinking lilac-melon tea with a water fairy, the elf opened her mouth, and the words came out, and they rode right into the fairy’s heart, who welcomed them, hugged them, loved them.

Moments later, the elf felt better than she had in years. Her chest had opened. Her throat had relaxed.

She was no longer ill.

She was going to be just fine.

Acknowledging it

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You know how some days you feel down and blah, and sometimes you’re okay with that, but sometimes it makes you panic, Ohmygod what if this feeling doesn’t pass, what if I never feel happy again, what if this is my new normal, I don’t know why I feel this way, the walls are closing in, I’m drowning, I’m regressing, all my hard work is undone…..and you go from 0 to 100 in about three milliseconds? (Or maybe you don’t know….but humor me).

Anyway, in processing that idea the other day, I was saying how cognitively I KNOW it always passes, I know that even months of a hard time don’t last forever, and therefore one day of feeling down doesn’t automatically equal a lifetime of it, but that it’s hard to remember in the moment. So one thing I said (half jokingly but also half totally serious) is that maybe I need a note on my phone that’s called “When I feel Crappy or Low”. Under that super creative title (…..) would be a few to-do items.

First is acknowledge what is contributing. Because as humans we can feel blah and we can feel down and we can feel upset for no reason, but as I am learning, there’s almost always one contributing factor. So first up is to figure out what the factors are. For me, there’s a list of “high-flyers” – events, people, thought patterns, or memories, that, more often than others, contribute. So first would be a checklist of those items (which would be more specific than this): Is it the weather? Is it a family member? Is it that grief? Is it that memory? Is it that anticipation of a change that’s coming?

I’ve found that almost always acknowledging it makes a difference. It instantly helps me feel back in control. It’s the flipped switch from Ohmygod I’m drowning, I’m out of control, everything is pressing on me, I’m infused with tidal waves of chaos to Oh. I’m in control. It’s just x, y, and z, and it’s not everything, and it’s not an internal malfunction, it’s an external rainshower that’s getting me a little wet but I’m fine, we’re fine, I’m fine.

Do you know that feeling I’m talking about? Kind of like in grad school when there was a huge paper to write or test to study for – it initially feels so big and so impossible to ever figure out. But as soon as a to-do list is made and it’s broken down, it’s manageable and you return to I can do this, this is doable.

The next thing to do, after acknowledging to myself what it is, is to focus on it more. This is so damn counter-intuitive. When something is upsetting, we want to ignore it, want to push it away, we don’t want to spend extra time and energy thinking about and talking about it. But – it works.

With the disclaimer that it often initially feels worse.

When you choose to focus in on it, whether it’s to write about it or talk about it or draw about it, or whatever it is for you, you might feel that tightness in your chest get tighter. The tears that you’ve held back might come. You might end up gasping for air, or you might feel the pain even stronger. Hold on. Because if you continue talking, continue writing, continue letting it out – you will then feel the release. You’ll feel your chest relax, you’ll notice the tears stop, you’ll notice you feel lighter, you’ll notice you feel better.

In the moment? So hard to do.

But maybe that’s what the reminder is for, that’s what the list is for.

Because it’s worked before. It’s been true before.

It applies now.

Toolkit

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I  said this the other day:

I don’t know about you, but in the moment, tools are really hard to remember to use. Also sometimes hard to believe that they’re going to do anything. So I find that practicing strategies and tools during calm moments, and semi-stressful moments, make them much more automatic to use during the super hard times. I think I could probably write a whole post on tools, and I think I will.

And I did.

Here are the three main tools in my toolkit lately that always help:

1. Move
Sometimes this means moving locations. Walking out of my apartment to go sit by the reservoir. Going to a coffee shop. Usually a change of location and scenery makes a huge difference and abates some of the heaviness I had been feeling.

Sometime this means physical movement, like going for a walk, going to the gym, or going to yoga. During this type of movement, I usually feel “it” moving through me. As I move my body, however vigorously or gently suits that moment, I’m moving it out. Moving the heaviness around, dislodging it from where it had taken root. More often than not, the tears or panic stop once I move – and this is something I have to re-learn each time. This morning I kept trying to wait it out. I said to myself, I’ll leave the apartment once I feel calmer, I’ll go to the gym once I’m not teary. But after a while I decided to just go – and by the time I got downstairs and into my car I was already a bit calmer. Just move. Now.

2. Visualize
I used to hate the idea of visualization, and that’s because I thought visualization was only “imagine yourself on the beach listening to the waves.” And while that type of visualization certainly has its time and place for me, it doesn’t do it all, and I needed more than that. I have since learned way more about this idea, and visualization has quickly become a go-to.

I usually visualize “it” moving. “It” can be panic, anxiety, memories, fear, whatever it is for you, or for me. Lately “it” has been a general heaviness that holds itself in my chest, in my throat, or in my head. It feels like a dark murky thick smoggy cloud. I like to envision a white, sparkly light coming in as I breathe in, swirling around, and clearing out the murky darkness as I breathe out. To those of you reading this and rolling your eyes: This works.

The other visualization I’ve done stems from something I read in an amazing neuroscience book [this is an affiliate link]. This chapter of the book discussed chronic pain and how visualization can help decrease the pain. And, I’ve used those ideas before, when I get a headache – I imagine the pain center in my brain, and I imagine a barrier around it, so that any pain signals my head tries to send are blocked and don’t reach the pain center. This works. I have practiced it so much that it now decreases the pain of a headache fairly quickly.

Anyway, I decided I could probably use the same principle around my heart, for those times that I’m feeling too much of my own feelings and all of everyone else’s feelings. So I imagine a barrier around my heart – not shutting myself off from the world, but protecting my heart when it needs a break.

3. Grounding
I could give you a zillion grounding tools (i.e. tools that help you stay present, focused on the moment), and there are another zillion out there on the internet. The ones that work for me best lately:

Mantras. I like mantras a lot, and I don’t like affirmations a lot. Mantras seem to be more relevant to me in the moment, whereas affirmations just…don’t work for me. [Side note: does anyone else feel like there’s a difference between the two?] For me, a mantra is a grounding statement, often what someone else would tell me in that moment, or what I would tell someone else, and ultimately, what I am aiming to trust and believe in that moment.

Sometimes my mantras are on post-it notes (there’s about 8 of them in my moleskin notebook right now) or in my pocket (the day of my wedding I texted my dear friend a picture of the post-it note in my purse that read, I am worthy) or just in my head. One that works in a moment of hypersensitivity: “Those are not my feelings. I don’t have to feel them.” Another one that works in a moment of panic: “I am breathing through this moment. I am breathing through this feeling.” They have become comforting statements that bring me focus and relief.

I also find narrating what I’m doing to be very calming. If I find myself starting to get spinny in my brain while I’m driving, I focus on what’s going on: I am in the car. I am driving home.

The one specific visualization that I do love, seems to fit better into this “grounding” category for me. It was an exercise I once learned in a therapy session, and the idea was to find a calming, safe place that could be thought about in such great detail that it would eventually be neurologically strengthened in my brain as calming, the minute that I pictured it. The place that has been consistently safe and calming for me is a specific location at my summer job. So after formally talking about the place in great detail (5 senses), it has been so strengthened in my brain that in a moment of overwhelm or panic or heaviness, I fairly automatically start thinking, I am on the back porch. I am rocking in the chair. I see the sunlight, streaming through the trees. I see the green grass, I see the blue skies. I hear the crickets, I hear the birds.

Calm.

For all of these mantras and narrations, I find pairing it with my breath crucial. I don’t really know how to explain this in writing, but basically, I breathe in for one piece of it, and breathe out for the other part, so it has some sort of rhythm to it. For example: Inhale for the entire length of I am breathing through this moment and then exhale for the length of I am breathing through this feeling. Does that make sense?

And there you have it. My current set of tools. As I’ve said, I really find that in a hard moment, it’s equally hard to remember to use these tools. Generally because I initially think, That’s not going to work. That’s not going to make this feeling better. But they always do. Not always right away, and not always fully, but they always help. And the more I practice them during less intense moments, the more automatic they become during hard moments.

I would really, really, love to know: do any of these tools work for you? What are your go-to tools and strategies these days? Please share with us – anonymous is always an option.