THE SECRET TO SUCCESSFUL LIVING THAT NO ONE WILL TELL YOU
Hi reader,
Before I begin, I’d like you to meet my white 2011 Prius. His name is Snowball.
Ok, you can stop looking at his cute butt now.
Snowball has a lot of cool features, like JBL speakers, plushy seats, and –this is one of my favorite features – a monitor on his dash that conveniently shows me exactly how many miles of fuel I have left.
I’ve been thinking again!
This notion that things are supposed to be any certain way, that we are supposed to feel good, not feel bad, not have bad things happen, not die. THIS is the enemy. This is the root of all suffering. Can I learn to be present with my anxiety without trying to change it? Can I learn to witness my panic attacks without attachment? Can I stop arguing with reality and allow my panic to just be? This is the paradox. By releasing my resistance to panic, panic goes away. That which you resist persists. Why do I think I should not suffer? Why do I believe I should not have problems? How could I live in this world and NOT have problems? Everyone has problems, this one is mine. I have had others and likely will have more. So what? Life isn’t supposed to be about dodging bullets! I’m supposed to be more powerful than that, smarter than that, cleverer than that? I have failed, I am now stupid and fat and lazy and unworthy of love because I suffer? That apparently is EXACTLY what I think. And I’ve just had the lovely realization that panic is going to stay with me until I can sit through it infinitely without attachment. It is the perfect teacher. Anyone can meditate in isolation on a beautiful mountain. Can you sit and meditate in anguish? Then you have achieved enlightenment. (Can I now declare that I don’t want to be enlightened after all?!)
I’ve noticed some things about myself this week. I’ve noticed that I’ve gotten caught in the “bargaining” trap. I keep thinking I can do enough right things to avoid this suffering. When I feel like I’m doing all I can and I’m still struggling then I spiral out of control pretty rapidly. I’ve also realized that I’m afraid to feel happy and afraid to relax. This seems to me to be classic victim thinking: I don’t dare let my guard down for an instant lest some Bad Thing take notice and pounce on me, snatching away all that is good in my life. So, I go along unable to feel all the good things around me! (Am I the Bad Thing, myself, perhaps?? I am clearly playing the role of Taker-Away-of-Good-Things as it stands…) I look at the lives of others. I can name real problems real people, both strangers and personal friends, have that would be much worse to experience than anything I’ve dealt with. I am afraid I haven’t suffered enough! What sickness is this??!! Those who know me well also know how ridiculous this is. I have experienced bad things, and enough of them; I have all that minimized in my mind such that my perspective is perhaps severely skewed.
I’ve hit on a string of erroneous beliefs here. No doubt we all have these: coping mechanisms, misinterpretations, rules learned as children that don’t hold water. What are yours? Do you see faulty beliefs or patterns of thought that exacerbate your suffering? What is your suffering like today? What would bring you relief?
What if the blocked mind is always the same? What if the same tricks to unblock the writerly mind can also be applied to unstick the panicking or anxious mind?
Thoughts?
I can count on writer’s block like I can count on my anxiety– constant companions that will never abandon me, like warts and aching joints. However, I need to write to feel right, so I have to find ways to push through or go around. I have some ideas for getting around the dreaded writer’s block that sometimes help; perhaps someone out there in cyberspace will also find something useful here:
Do I have something to say that I’m afraid of saying? I give myself permission to write something and not publish it or share it in any way. Then I can say whatever comes out!
Often all the ideas I have throughout the day (which, you know, were all exceedingly brilliant and insightful) elude me when I finally have time to sit down at the keyboard. I don’t have a solution for this yet (although a recording device might be useful, but only if I actually use it, which I probably wouldn’t), but picking out something to start on, even if it’s seemingly off-topic or perhaps completely unrelated to a project of mine, can sometimes work as a jumpstart.
Type random gibberish. At least I’m hitting keys!
Form thoughts into sentences and type them out. Even if I’m repeating, “I don’t know what to write. I can’t think of a thing. I just feel anxious. AGAIN. Blah blah, that’s boring. I can’t write about that again. I should go to bed. But what if I can’t sleep? I might as well sit here. At least then I’m not panicking about not being able to fall asleep…” etc. Classic application of the adage, “Begin where you are.” Sitting at my kitchen table, unsold dozens of eggs from today’s market all around me, my stomach growls from too much adrenaline and too little food. (Yes, that’s literally where I am.)
When completely and disastrously blocked with no useful direction and nothing is working, perhaps a list: First Ten Things I’d Do With Lottery Winnings, maybe. Or Things I Wish I Understood (that could take hours!).
I’m sure there are more tricks to play on the blocked mind. Writers, what are your favorite tried-and-true ways to get unstuck?
This is a rant.
I am fed up with feeling crazy. Fed up with feeling like something is wrong with me, like I’m doing something wrong, like I can’t talk AGAIN about how I’m still having a hard time.
I’m sick of having a hard time.
I’m sick of having negative things to say. Sick of being such a big baby. Sick of my own excuses. I don’t need to feel ecstatic, I just don’t want to feel anxious or panicky, and I’d prefer to feel kinda content and peaceful, not depressed.
I don’t think that’s asking too much.
I don’t think it’s asking too much to feel like my husband doesn’t mind listening to me. I don’t think it’s asking too much for my kids to not drive me batty and to occasionally give me some space. I don’t think it’s asking too much to get to exercise and do yoga every day. I don’t think it’s asking too much for me to write two blog posts a week. And get good sleep, and take my supplements, and eat nourishing food.
Yet somehow all of these things are things that don’t happen. In fact, I haven’t exercised in several weeks. My kids climb all over me all day every day and I never do any yoga. I don’t feel like I can talk about my anxiety because my husband freaks out about it and constantly wanders off when I’m talking to him. It’s infuriating and isolating and makes me feel worse.
I have anxiety. I don’t respond well to elevated stress. I am not resilient. I am stressed. On days like today, everything makes me anxious and short of breath. I worry that I’ll have to have a panic attack later tonight to release all this tension. I’d really rather not go through that.
I am in perimenopause. This will come to an end one day, but probably not for about ten years. Still, that gives me hope. My hormones go up and down and my mood goes with them. I am not enjoying being such a ball of hormones but at least it makes sense. I am so tired of being so high maintenance. I can’t find the time for taking care of myself like I apparently need to. What is it going to take for me to find time for me?
I am not writing this for sympathy; in fact, sympathy would most likely infuriate me. I am writing this to admit it. I am writing this to de-pathologize it. Not everyone has anxiety and panic, but lots of people do. And even without the anxiety most every human being out there has days that feel like my day today. I am writing this for every other mom out there who is struggling today, because I know we all do, perhaps in different ways, but we all struggle. And I’m not crazy or even unusual for struggling, and neither are you.
As you might have guessed from my title, I am both mom and unschooler. And while there are loads and loads of unschooling moms out there, this story is just about me. It’s not even really about my kids, although they are supposedly the ones getting their education by way of unschooling. Unschooling is something that each family has to define for itself, and it looks different in every household that practices it.
Today I’ve been thinking about how we are biologically programmed to learn, for better or worse, to define acceptable partnerships by how our parents treat us. If our parents nurture and support us for who we are, we will seek that in a partner. But if our parents demonstrate conditional love, that is all we will accept. If, as daughters, we see our fathers exhibit uncontrolled rage, we will lose interest in the “nice guy” (or gal) and will instead seek an angrier, more controlling partner. If we witness violence regularly in our childhood home, our adult lives will feel incomplete without it. This is why our choices as parents matter so much. If we love our kids, as the vast majority of parents really do, we make decisions about how we care for them based on wanting what is best for them. Surely this includes wanting them to be capable of happiness as adults, to form healthy, lasting relationships, and to refuse abuse, to not fall victim to others who would treat them poorly. But if we do not control our own anger, if we destroy property or make threats to “teach them a lesson,” we are sending our children a very negative message. We are effectively saying, “Might is right.” We are telling them, “I don’t value your opinions, your feelings, or your possessions.” Our words are nothing compared to our actions. Our outbursts tell them, “I only accept you when you do as I say; any independent thought that disagrees with my views earns my contempt.” Do we want our children to choose friends and partners who talk to them this way?
Then we have to stop. We have to be the adults who act from loving kindness, instead of reacting in anger. If we need help, we must seek it. This Valentine’s Day, I’m taking action to end the violent outbursts in my own home, beginning with myself. I am disembarking from the angry train, and I invite you to join me.
Be the change. Begin now.
My horoscope via Twitter today:
“You may be attracted to an emotional drama today because the expression of feelings resonates with something buried very deep inside you. You’re reminded of an early childhood experience that has relevance to the present moment. But don’t get lost in nostalgia; what happened previously is not as important as what’s going on right now. Fortunately, the current intensity will settle down as your memories widen your perspective.”
I’ve been thinking, perhaps excessively, about buried emotions for a while now. I have endured panic attacks, and at one point suffered enough for my panic to qualify as panic disorder. Panic gets a person’s attention when nothing else can, and that is exactly its purpose: it is a powerful motivator. I learned to be vigilant about nutrition, especially omega-3 fatty acids, and to recognize my signs of stress earlier and earlier so that my body no longer needed to escalate to the adrenaline dump of a full scale panic attack. I also gained substantial control over my runaway trains of thought so that if something extra stressful occurred I could literally grab my panicking mind and move it to something else positive. I had become very skilled in anxiety management and it had been a very long time since I had a true panic attack. Then I got lazy. My anxiety was creeping up, and I knew it, but somehow I just wasn’t finding the time for self-care. I kept forgetting about my supplements and failing to make time to exercise. The holidays were flying by with all the extra stress and commitments they bring (even though I worked hard to keep all that to a minimum). My four-year-old daughter got bitten by a brown recluse and I knew I needed to work on lowering my stress level but I just didn’t do it. Finally I had a tiny health scare of my own (which was absolutely nothing, and a fabrication of my own creation) and I full-on freaked out. A three-hour panic episode left me rattled, afraid I had returned to square one, fearing the next attack, feeling completely out of control. A chance comment from a trusted friend gave me new direction: it seems to be time to take my processing of life’s traumas to a new level. Fear is stored in my bones, and I’m ready to let that out (safely!), to release old fears and be done with them. I’m unsure at this point to what degree these old fears of mine (or anyone else’s) can be completely released– injuries do leave scars, after all– but I know there is a great deal of progress that can be made, and I know from how I react to things that I have plenty of stored emotions that I can air out and shed light on so they won’t be so scary. We’ll see what I do with all this.
First post on my new blog, solely devoted to What We Do On The Farm. Enjoy!
I caught sight of this from Momversation on my Twitter feed this morning: Is a Lazy Summer Really So Bad? Contributor Shannon of whiskeyinmysippycup.com talks about letting kids be kids on summer break and how, as she sees it, they have eighteen summers before the Grown-Up World gives them the ol’ smack-down and fun screeches to a halt forever. Now, she’s got a point, and if you’ve bought in to the whole school-work-retirement-death model then it’s a damn good one. But as soon as I see that four-letter word, l-a-z-y, my hackles stand up and the surface of my eyeballs starts peeling off.
I despise the lazy label.
What’s the problem? The problem here is, what Shannon describes isn’t a lazy summer at all. It’s a normal summer. And the profiteering of those entities that sell the condemnation of being lazy threatens to bankrupt half the middle class and destroy childhood forever. No time for watching clouds, roasting marshmallows (ack! the chemicals! NO YOU MAY NOT EAT MARSHMALLOWS DON’T YOU KNOW THAT CONTRIBUTES TO ADHD WHICH WILL IMPAIR YOUR ABILITY TO GET INTO AN IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL???), catching fireflies, or that dreaded most-lazy-of-all-pastimes: daydreaming. All this overscheduling engineers exactly what the Establishment needs to perpetuate itself: more drones who can’t think for themselves. Many of the great minds ironically most revered in schools were, if not completely unschooled, at least allowed space to cultivate thought and creativity as children. Certainly Edison, Einstein, Lincoln, and Curie (just to name a few) didn’t get carted from one formulaic organized groupthink activity to the next throughout their childhoods.
The condemnation of lazy isn’t limited to kids either. Adults push each other at work, at the gym, and on the subliminal message sourcebox implanted in almost every home in America (need a translation? that would be your TV). We are weekend warriors, we plan activities even on vacation, we cram it all in, but at what price to health and sanity? As William Sloane Coffin said, “Even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.” Chinese astrology aside, will winning the rat race be your greatest accomplishment as you reflect on your life at its end?
A wise friend, Tina Tinsley, once told me, “You’re not lazy when you’re doing what you want to do.” This key insight can be a powerful tool to guide planning and decision making. The next time I catch myself calling myself lazy I’m going to pull out this tool and ask, what is it I want to be doing right now? Feeding offspring and refereeing arguments notwithstanding, I’m going to begin a list of honest answers to that question. With three small kids, I may not be able to always attend to my “right now” desires in the now, but the simple act of naming and owning them feels like a wonderful (if subtle) rebellion against a culture that would prefer to busy me into an early grave. And I’m going to banish “l-a-z-y” to the four-letter-word list.
Will you join me?
