Anxiety
I am writing this post to myself to read in about 15 months but maybe some folks reading it will relate to the issues I'm trying to address. Some folks - the ones I work with are foremost on my mind - may or may not want to plumb the depths of my psyche like this!
Dear Jon,
At the start of this trip, you were struggling with stress and the impacts it has on your health as well as the people around you. Remember the dry mouth and swollen tongue that doctors (both western and eastern) told you was the result of high stress? Remember getting a bunch of blood tests with borderline results? Remember the night when Lily sat you down and told you that yelling isn't normal and shouldn't be normal and could ruin the trip? Yeah, that was you in June 2019.
You've struggled with anxiety your whole life. When you were a kid, you used the term "perfectionist" to explain why you had tantrums if your tennis serve didn't go in. In your early (and unsuccessful) relationships, you used "no" to gain control without understanding why control seemed so necessary. You've raged out innumerable times because things didn't go "right."
A few years ago, you hit a kind of bottom. Fortunately, you stumbled into a therapist who recommend two TED talks by Brene Brown. Exactly as the therapist suggested, you learned about the difference between being bad and doing bad and the associated difference between guilt and shame. You had an excruciating but necessary conversation with Elise about what you still call your "anticipation disorder." You started a daily anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication. You continued seeing a therapist.
Fast forward a few years. You are getting ready to embark on this adventure. You are doing a great job of preparing but, as the actual start approaches, you have to reconcile what you can and can't control. You're talking to your oldest child about the serenity prayer but you are struggling yourself to accept the things you definitely cannot change. You're talking a good game about how this trip is going to lead you to confront your approach to adversity. But, at the root of it, you are still developing your skills for managing fear.
With a few days to go, the fears seem uncountable. Every conversation you have with people about the trip, includes plenty of wonder but also each person's idea about a worst-case scenario or the reasons they have for never doing this kind of thing. Today it's mosquito bites. Not exotic, disease-bearing nightmares but conventional, itching, annoying, nuisance bug bites. Lily woke up this morning about at least a half dozen bites from day camp yesterday. Elise joked that she's not going to survive the summer in Minnesota, which is famous for mosquitos.
Yesterday you were booking flights from Asia to Africa and had to consider some tight connections. Your stomach tightened at the prospect of missing an every-three-days flight from Singapore across the Indian Ocean and getting stranded, missing the start of a safari expedition.
Fear. You taste it. You feel it smothering you. It seethes around the edges like wolves in a Jack London story. It makes you want to head for high ground. You ask yourself, "should we pay extra for nonstop flights everywhere?" Time after time, you decide against a bus ride between destinations because Lily might get motion sickness or the kids might be miserable. How many experiences are you missing in order to sanitize and void risk? Great, now you're worried about how much you're worried.
Meta-stress has always been an issue. Do you remember being in the basement of your childhood home and wondering if you're going to be labeled "psychotic"? What was it about that specific word that was such a big deal? Where did you become convinced that a prescription would be a death sentence for your viability as a friend, companion or employee? How much energy did you spend on all of those episodes where you got mad about being mad?
A few of your friends have what seems like confidence or serenity to be so brave about these kinds of things. They can leave spontaneously for an adventure or shrug when they realize they forgot some seemingly-essential item. Remember that time you went camping at the coast and realized Lily didn't have a sleeping bag? It turned out there's a Fred Meyer in every town and you can buy another one.
So, money is the answer? Buy another sleeping bag, book a nonstop flight. Now you're worried that you're just using your privilege to paper over the problem.
You are wondering how other people do this. You are wondering if everybody also holds these fears but copes with them better. Or does everybody have panic attacks as they prepare for major endeavors and they don't write long-winded blog entries about it? Some people seem to be unaware of the consequences of their lack of preparation.
Do you remember the feeling you had in 2001 after you took two months to join a cross-USA bike tour? You described it as having a "deep keel." The forces were there: high winds in the form of jobs and relationships and logistics. But the trip had deepened your keel in a way that made you resilient. Resilient. That's a word to think about some more.
For the last few weeks, you've been getting treatment at a Chinese medicine clinic. Your lead doctor initially focused on your Yin deficiency. She focused on opening your core with deep abdominal breathing. Later, she talked about your "numbers" and "elements." She said something about the nature of having a water element that reminded you of your keel metaphor.
One more piece of this: Elise talks about "entering the stream." Eons ago, she read a book about child birth that talked about two different styles of coping with the pain and physical sensations. In retrospect, it seems similar to this idea of entering the stream of chaos. Acceptance. The serenity prayer again.
Cognitively, it seems so obvious right now that if you can "let go" and trust your keel to keep you upright in the stream, or to make it easy for you to right yourself if you do flip, you'll be able to enjoy the trip so much more. It's like that feeling when your pedal stroke (biking) seems to flow so easily and you really become one with the bike.
So it comes back to Brene Brown. If you can take the risk, you can reap the reward. If you are governed by fear, you'll stay in the vicious cycle. You can see this so clearly in human relationships and yet, to this day, you can't apply it to all of these decisions, large and small.
So it's August 2020 and you've been traveling for 15 months with your family all over the world and all over the country. How have you done? Have you let go? Have you allowed "terrible" things to happen? Have you missed some connections?
Most of all, I hope that you've done whatever it takes to create joy and connection. The whole point of this trip is to experience. If you're not out there, you can't do that. If you're so tightly wound that you can't absorb, then you'll take nothing with you. If, as Elise used to point out, you're so busy looking at your cadence meter that you ignore the incredible scenery (I think that was in the black hills of south dakota), then why did you bother coming here at all. Most importantly, if your anxiety prevented the kids from being present, then why did you do this at all.
Good luck,
You
Dear Jon,
At the start of this trip, you were struggling with stress and the impacts it has on your health as well as the people around you. Remember the dry mouth and swollen tongue that doctors (both western and eastern) told you was the result of high stress? Remember getting a bunch of blood tests with borderline results? Remember the night when Lily sat you down and told you that yelling isn't normal and shouldn't be normal and could ruin the trip? Yeah, that was you in June 2019.
You've struggled with anxiety your whole life. When you were a kid, you used the term "perfectionist" to explain why you had tantrums if your tennis serve didn't go in. In your early (and unsuccessful) relationships, you used "no" to gain control without understanding why control seemed so necessary. You've raged out innumerable times because things didn't go "right."
A few years ago, you hit a kind of bottom. Fortunately, you stumbled into a therapist who recommend two TED talks by Brene Brown. Exactly as the therapist suggested, you learned about the difference between being bad and doing bad and the associated difference between guilt and shame. You had an excruciating but necessary conversation with Elise about what you still call your "anticipation disorder." You started a daily anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication. You continued seeing a therapist.
Fast forward a few years. You are getting ready to embark on this adventure. You are doing a great job of preparing but, as the actual start approaches, you have to reconcile what you can and can't control. You're talking to your oldest child about the serenity prayer but you are struggling yourself to accept the things you definitely cannot change. You're talking a good game about how this trip is going to lead you to confront your approach to adversity. But, at the root of it, you are still developing your skills for managing fear.
With a few days to go, the fears seem uncountable. Every conversation you have with people about the trip, includes plenty of wonder but also each person's idea about a worst-case scenario or the reasons they have for never doing this kind of thing. Today it's mosquito bites. Not exotic, disease-bearing nightmares but conventional, itching, annoying, nuisance bug bites. Lily woke up this morning about at least a half dozen bites from day camp yesterday. Elise joked that she's not going to survive the summer in Minnesota, which is famous for mosquitos.
Yesterday you were booking flights from Asia to Africa and had to consider some tight connections. Your stomach tightened at the prospect of missing an every-three-days flight from Singapore across the Indian Ocean and getting stranded, missing the start of a safari expedition.
Fear. You taste it. You feel it smothering you. It seethes around the edges like wolves in a Jack London story. It makes you want to head for high ground. You ask yourself, "should we pay extra for nonstop flights everywhere?" Time after time, you decide against a bus ride between destinations because Lily might get motion sickness or the kids might be miserable. How many experiences are you missing in order to sanitize and void risk? Great, now you're worried about how much you're worried.
Meta-stress has always been an issue. Do you remember being in the basement of your childhood home and wondering if you're going to be labeled "psychotic"? What was it about that specific word that was such a big deal? Where did you become convinced that a prescription would be a death sentence for your viability as a friend, companion or employee? How much energy did you spend on all of those episodes where you got mad about being mad?
A few of your friends have what seems like confidence or serenity to be so brave about these kinds of things. They can leave spontaneously for an adventure or shrug when they realize they forgot some seemingly-essential item. Remember that time you went camping at the coast and realized Lily didn't have a sleeping bag? It turned out there's a Fred Meyer in every town and you can buy another one.
So, money is the answer? Buy another sleeping bag, book a nonstop flight. Now you're worried that you're just using your privilege to paper over the problem.
You are wondering how other people do this. You are wondering if everybody also holds these fears but copes with them better. Or does everybody have panic attacks as they prepare for major endeavors and they don't write long-winded blog entries about it? Some people seem to be unaware of the consequences of their lack of preparation.
Do you remember the feeling you had in 2001 after you took two months to join a cross-USA bike tour? You described it as having a "deep keel." The forces were there: high winds in the form of jobs and relationships and logistics. But the trip had deepened your keel in a way that made you resilient. Resilient. That's a word to think about some more.
For the last few weeks, you've been getting treatment at a Chinese medicine clinic. Your lead doctor initially focused on your Yin deficiency. She focused on opening your core with deep abdominal breathing. Later, she talked about your "numbers" and "elements." She said something about the nature of having a water element that reminded you of your keel metaphor.
One more piece of this: Elise talks about "entering the stream." Eons ago, she read a book about child birth that talked about two different styles of coping with the pain and physical sensations. In retrospect, it seems similar to this idea of entering the stream of chaos. Acceptance. The serenity prayer again.
Cognitively, it seems so obvious right now that if you can "let go" and trust your keel to keep you upright in the stream, or to make it easy for you to right yourself if you do flip, you'll be able to enjoy the trip so much more. It's like that feeling when your pedal stroke (biking) seems to flow so easily and you really become one with the bike.
So it comes back to Brene Brown. If you can take the risk, you can reap the reward. If you are governed by fear, you'll stay in the vicious cycle. You can see this so clearly in human relationships and yet, to this day, you can't apply it to all of these decisions, large and small.
So it's August 2020 and you've been traveling for 15 months with your family all over the world and all over the country. How have you done? Have you let go? Have you allowed "terrible" things to happen? Have you missed some connections?
Most of all, I hope that you've done whatever it takes to create joy and connection. The whole point of this trip is to experience. If you're not out there, you can't do that. If you're so tightly wound that you can't absorb, then you'll take nothing with you. If, as Elise used to point out, you're so busy looking at your cadence meter that you ignore the incredible scenery (I think that was in the black hills of south dakota), then why did you bother coming here at all. Most importantly, if your anxiety prevented the kids from being present, then why did you do this at all.
Good luck,
You
All I can think to say is way will open. My heart is pounding. I love you.
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