Learning to Slow Down

2020 was, for me, a year of challenging lessons. It was a year of brutal and unexpected endings. It was a year of continually thinking "surely this is the thing that will kill me, how can I withstand this much emotional pain?" only to find myself still standing at the end of the day. It was a year of intense loss, heartbreak, and painful change. It was also a year of more meaningful personal growth, gain, and honesty than I have ever experienced.

The pandemic and subsequent lockdown caused all my anxious thoughts and feelings to percolate to the surface. Without proper help and guidance, it left me feeling lost and out of control, which resulted in unexplainable panic. I am not naturally someone who does well with extended periods of inaction. I thrive on staying busy. I think this has a lot to do with appeasing my internal tiny, nervous dog. Creating even the illusion of business provides a known source for my anxiety.

Of course, you're anxious; you have five deadlines due in the next 4 hours! However, once we moved into lockdown and my work went away, there was nothing to do. I was furloughed from my job; there were no tasks to keep myself busy, no errands to run, no distractions from myself or my feelings. I couldn't do home any improvement projects because I was now unemployed and money was tight. And worst of all, there was no escape from the anxiety.

What this meant for me is that I, unfortunately, began using my words and actions as weapons, my fear and anxiety becoming braided together almost like a whip I used to lash out and crack over at those I love. I need those I hurt in this process to know that this was more about me than it was about you. I am embarrassed beyond measure and deeply sorry for how my actions hurt you and broke trust.

In May, I began therapy, one of the best and weirdest things I've ever experienced. It's a strange reality talking intimately about your most profound and most personal truths over video chat with someone you've never met in person. All my preconceived notions about therapy had to be tossed out the window. There is no couch, and I do not lie down in sessions. There is no older man with a long white beard. We do talk about my relationship with my parents, but there are no lead-in questions from my therapist saying things like, "uh-huh, and tell me about your relationship with your father." (Fun fact, Sigmund Freud, the founding father of the psychoanalytical method therapists still use today, died with a hole the size of a dollar coin in his soft pallet due to his cocaine addiction. Also, his middle name was Schlomo, which I don't think gets enough media attention, but that's a topic for another day.)

There is no safe space specifically manufactured to make me feel comfortable and at ease. The safe space is mine to find, cultivate, and maintain. There are whole new anxiety-inducing realities like the possibilities (probabilities) that housemates will overhear my sessions and know some of my deepest and darkest emotions. There is much to be said for the benefits of realizing when I have created a safe space and listening to my intuition to shift my location if and when I no longer feels secure in my surroundings. It is powerful to recognize that I can be open and honest anywhere, not just within the four walls of my therapist's office, and that I have the power to change if my needs are not being met. There's a sort of poetic justice in learning to slow down and act intentionally while living through a global pandemic.

Along with the myriad of benefits I have attained through regular weekly check-ins about my mental health, I am finally beginning to have some of the language to put with and help define the feelings that are so familiar to me. The biggest of these was learning that I have Social Anxiety Disorder. Due to my dark sense of humor and substantial use of sarcasm, I sometimes spend parts of my day laughing at the fact that this makes me clinically SAD. Some days SAD means that I am a person with anxiety, navigating through life normally with minor hiccups here and there. Other days it means that I am anxiety running around in my human skin-suit.

On those days, my internal reality looks much like that farside comic depicting a chihuahua in front of an espresso maker with the caption "while their owners sleep, nervous little dogs prepare for their day." On full-blown anxiety days, I am in that seemingly permanent state of debilitating over-caffination - feeling like I may never stop trembling, yet also like I can't get up off the couch. Either way, you slice it, it means most days I have some varying degree of an internal tremble. Tremble for fear of receiving criticism, embarrassment, or humiliation in everyday situations like speaking in crowds or even vocalizing my real thoughts and opinions with friends and family. I have trouble owning my feelings and delivering them clearly and being assertive without being unintentionally hurtful. It means I find it challenging to meet people where they are, as they show up.

For example, say I'm at a party or a large gathering of friends - I know, what's a party?! A large crowd of friends doesn't sound very conscious of COVID protocol, but just for the sake of example, that's where I am. At most social events, I tend to oscillate between two states of being. I am the wallflower clinging to whoever I know at the event, afraid and unsure how to contribute anything to the conversation. Otherwise, I am in the center of everything, leading the discussion and becoming the loudest voice. What I have learned is that both of these are anxiety responses. Either decision I made left me feeling inauthentic like I was experiencing life through a thick film - like one of those shower curtain walls families have made to hug their loved ones during COVID.

By taking myself out of the conversation or becoming the whole conversation, anxiety does not need to be included because I am not interacting with anyone. In rejecting myself, I protected myself - sort of. Here's the secret though this isn't learning to deal with anxiety, this is pacifying it.

Until recently, I didn't realize that refusing to claim the full spectrum of my emotions and communicate about them meant that I was stigmatizing myself. A stigma marks a person as 'different,' it creates a state of separation between the addresser and the addressee. The World Health Organisation defines stigma as a mark of shame, disgrace, or disapproval, resulting in an individual being rejected, discriminated against, and excluded from participating in several different social areas. When personal stigmatization is the foundation of your basic internal comprehension, it's no wonder when nothing and nowhere feels safe.

So here's what I learned in 2020: If you are not a safe space for examining, exploring, and communicating about the full spectrum of your emotions, it doesn't matter what sort of space you find yourself in, everything will feel insecure. The relationship you have with yourself is the most important one. As such, it is my choice if I wake up in the morning and appease my tiny inner dog and have four shots of espresso before anyone else wakes up, or to counteract and balance out the small dog by doing calming tasks like meditating or going for a walk. It's my choice if I take myself out of the conversation. It's also my choice to communicate with others about my feelings of anxiety.

I am my choices, decisions, and responsibility. Good, bad, or indifferent; no one has to live with the consequences of my actions but me. So it might be in my best interest to choose to act and communicate in a way that benefits my growth, rather than stigmatizes all that is "wrong."

Radical self-love. Through all the chaos and confusion, loss and heartache, that's what 2020 taught me. Suppose you are willing to stand in the fire and let it lick at your skin without flinching and you can walk through the fire determined to meet the person on the other side of the hardship. In that case, your phoenix rebirth might be the most beautiful and inspirational thing you have ever experienced. And don't get me wrong, it's easy to say, but fucking hard to accomplish! But it's worth it. I'm still getting to know the woman I am becoming, but I finally feel like I can recognize her in the mirror staring back at me or in conversation when expressing myself. And she is worth moving through every tremble and scorching blaze it has taken to find her.