I started saying this phrase recently, referring to spaces where I had been feeling a particular body response to some unknown threat or problem and was able to ultimately trace back to what the root concern was. I call this "naming the cliff."
In those moments, I was a few steps away from overwhelmed, teetering on the edge of an invisible something. Driving back along a particular path was causing a lot of physical symptoms from an extreme emotional space--however, once I connected what the emotional spark was, why those symptoms were there, I named the cliff.
Naming the cliff is a huge benefit unto itself. I knew where I was. I knew where the edges were. I might even be able to start making tentative steps down from the cliff, talking myself down from the scarier areas with that actualized understanding of that space. It does not make the cliff dissolve to know its name, but at least I have more tools available to me to tell someone where I am and techniques that I might used before, like places to attach my carabiner put in the wall by a previous excursion. There is less "unknown" factor, which is a reassurance unto itself. If this is a frequent cliff that I end up on, there might still be a level of frustration, at least until compassion enters, but not knowing is worse to me than wandering in figurative fog. The cliff I'm standing on could be just a stump or it could be stemming from a trauma mountain--I know better what resources I might need once I know where it's coming from, after I have recognized it and named it for what it is.
New cliffs might not have any resources there yet, but at least I can survey the area clearly. Maybe it's like another cliff I've been on before. It takes practice. I'm getting more and more practice in interpreting physical symptoms into what their emotional source might be--it has been and will continue to be a process. The problem, the reaction needs recognition before we can carry forward.
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Physical Symptoms of Emotional Trauma
This last week, I had an adventure up to Skyward Corporate Headquarters, up in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. With stops and traffic, this drive from Blormal I tend to average at five hours, meaning that there is plenty of time to think and otherwise make a lot of headway on a good audiobook.
I do enjoy going up to Headquarters. There are some amusing doubletakes, and I appreciate seeing people in their context, where everyone is more than their name and a picture in the upper corner of the email or a voice on the phone. I work with real people outside of my own small office. The training that I was up there for seemed to go really well, in my estimation of things, and I have some good things to keep thinking about. However, the part that I want to share today was the drive home.
After about an hour and a half into the trip, I realized that my hands were aching, which in turn led to the realization that I was gripping the steering wheel as though it were anchoring my body to my chair, white knuckles and tensed arms. I also realized that I wasn't breathing, either holding my breath or taking only tiny breaths. These tiny breaths are designed to not disturb my abdominal cavity.
A further body scan revealed that I was tensing my legs and lower abdominals, bracing myself for any bump or, in general, against pain. I took a moment to try to consciously relax these parts of my body, but more importantly I asked myself, gently, what was going on. I was geared up for survival, for protection. I mean, the construction wasn't that bad, the weather was clear, and no one was driving with any more assholery than normal.
It clicked a few miles later: this was the Mayos drive. My mind wasn't thinking about it at all, but my body knew this drive. My body knew this path. Three quarters of the drive to Stevens Point is two thirds of the drive to Rochester, Minnesota, where I have gone many times to the Mayo Clinic.
The drive up there, heading straight up 39, I've had some good associations with that first part of the trip, having pulled off toward Chicagoland for all kinds of adventures and memories with friends and family. However, once 39 joins up with 90 and even later joining with 94, that leg loses that buffer. The way home, once I was on 39/90/94 and then eventually 39 all the way home, has no buffer at all--it's there and raw and jarring. Or so my body was telling me.
I have made that trip with grief, with resignation, with anger, with hopelessness, with desperation, with anxiety, with fear, and otherwise in a great deal of pain. My mind was elsewhere, but my body remembered that drive and it knew that place.
Sorting out those thoughts, I had three particular impulses that my body wanted to do to discharge those feelings: cry, curl protectively around myself, and escape. As the only occupant in the car at the moment, I settled on putting my foot down a little more firmly on the accelerator, the best escape I could manage at the moment. I still had to pull off to recognize other bodily needs, but I was pretty sure that if I allowed myself a good, long cry or just to curl up into a ball, that I was not going to pull out of it to be home in time for our evening plans, nor would I feel "safe" until I was long enough off of this path.
That drive does a number on me every time. And I forget it each time until I tune in to what my body is telling me. My emotions have a physical toll on my body. The physical toll on my body has similarly built many lingering emotions. It's all connected, the extreme symptoms of both the body and the mind, expressing through each other. I think this happens sometimes because we haven't allowed a clear path--intentionally or otherwise--and other times its just the way your body and mind need to experience that stimuli, whether it's grief, pain, or any other overwhelming something.
I did have a good, long cry when I got home that night. Andy was kind enough to just let me pour out all of the swirling pieces, offering reassurance where I asked for it and otherwise just being that compassionate presence. I am still growing in this awareness of self, particularly in the physical components, pausing to ask myself where and how I am feeling an emotion in my body as it is happening. This process is gradually refining through practice to where I work to give descriptions of what is happening in my body, which serves as its own resource.
For example, I have recently felt a surge of inadequacy that for me felt like a weight in the undersides of my forearms and upperarms, continuing into an ache in the bottom of my ventral abdomen. Depending on the source of a particular grief I might be feeling, I might feel it with a different sensation in a different part of my body--there's a difference in when it rests as a choking weight on my throat and chest as opposed to an impossibly solid wall right behind my eyes or directly in the center of my torso as a radiating dark mass. It's all grief, but sometimes I need to feel it differently with how that particular grief wave has rolled through.
This timing was oddly appropriate, given that I was up at corporate for emotional intelligence training and more importantly I am now two years with my permanent colostomy. I don't know what to do with this anniversary. When a loved one dies, socially past the first year I don't feel that it's widely acceptable to mark the day publicly anymore (not necessarily frowned on, but definitely not openly encouraged). But the grief waves still roll through; that change in your life resonates with you even when it feels everyone else has forgotten. My ostomy surgery was a good thing. It was also something to grieve about. I'm developing ways that I want to choose to mark it, but my running favorite right now is to choose to make a new change to benefit my body--this November, I'm working on getting back onto keto in earnest, and I am getting back into the pool again. Lap swimming has a bonus of stretching me cognitively, as I watch my body in suspended space, scanning for those sensations and what I'm feeling in those moments as muscle memory slowly reawakens.
It's practice, learning how to be with your emotions and your body. It's understanding that helps you connect them. It's a wholistic "you" that can grow out of it. Listening to your body is hard, particularly when it is telling you news that you don't want to hear, but it is an invaluable resource, cluing you in to pieces long before your brain can catch up.
I do enjoy going up to Headquarters. There are some amusing doubletakes, and I appreciate seeing people in their context, where everyone is more than their name and a picture in the upper corner of the email or a voice on the phone. I work with real people outside of my own small office. The training that I was up there for seemed to go really well, in my estimation of things, and I have some good things to keep thinking about. However, the part that I want to share today was the drive home.
After about an hour and a half into the trip, I realized that my hands were aching, which in turn led to the realization that I was gripping the steering wheel as though it were anchoring my body to my chair, white knuckles and tensed arms. I also realized that I wasn't breathing, either holding my breath or taking only tiny breaths. These tiny breaths are designed to not disturb my abdominal cavity.
A further body scan revealed that I was tensing my legs and lower abdominals, bracing myself for any bump or, in general, against pain. I took a moment to try to consciously relax these parts of my body, but more importantly I asked myself, gently, what was going on. I was geared up for survival, for protection. I mean, the construction wasn't that bad, the weather was clear, and no one was driving with any more assholery than normal.
It clicked a few miles later: this was the Mayos drive. My mind wasn't thinking about it at all, but my body knew this drive. My body knew this path. Three quarters of the drive to Stevens Point is two thirds of the drive to Rochester, Minnesota, where I have gone many times to the Mayo Clinic.
The drive up there, heading straight up 39, I've had some good associations with that first part of the trip, having pulled off toward Chicagoland for all kinds of adventures and memories with friends and family. However, once 39 joins up with 90 and even later joining with 94, that leg loses that buffer. The way home, once I was on 39/90/94 and then eventually 39 all the way home, has no buffer at all--it's there and raw and jarring. Or so my body was telling me.
I have made that trip with grief, with resignation, with anger, with hopelessness, with desperation, with anxiety, with fear, and otherwise in a great deal of pain. My mind was elsewhere, but my body remembered that drive and it knew that place.
Sorting out those thoughts, I had three particular impulses that my body wanted to do to discharge those feelings: cry, curl protectively around myself, and escape. As the only occupant in the car at the moment, I settled on putting my foot down a little more firmly on the accelerator, the best escape I could manage at the moment. I still had to pull off to recognize other bodily needs, but I was pretty sure that if I allowed myself a good, long cry or just to curl up into a ball, that I was not going to pull out of it to be home in time for our evening plans, nor would I feel "safe" until I was long enough off of this path.
That drive does a number on me every time. And I forget it each time until I tune in to what my body is telling me. My emotions have a physical toll on my body. The physical toll on my body has similarly built many lingering emotions. It's all connected, the extreme symptoms of both the body and the mind, expressing through each other. I think this happens sometimes because we haven't allowed a clear path--intentionally or otherwise--and other times its just the way your body and mind need to experience that stimuli, whether it's grief, pain, or any other overwhelming something.
I did have a good, long cry when I got home that night. Andy was kind enough to just let me pour out all of the swirling pieces, offering reassurance where I asked for it and otherwise just being that compassionate presence. I am still growing in this awareness of self, particularly in the physical components, pausing to ask myself where and how I am feeling an emotion in my body as it is happening. This process is gradually refining through practice to where I work to give descriptions of what is happening in my body, which serves as its own resource.
For example, I have recently felt a surge of inadequacy that for me felt like a weight in the undersides of my forearms and upperarms, continuing into an ache in the bottom of my ventral abdomen. Depending on the source of a particular grief I might be feeling, I might feel it with a different sensation in a different part of my body--there's a difference in when it rests as a choking weight on my throat and chest as opposed to an impossibly solid wall right behind my eyes or directly in the center of my torso as a radiating dark mass. It's all grief, but sometimes I need to feel it differently with how that particular grief wave has rolled through.
This timing was oddly appropriate, given that I was up at corporate for emotional intelligence training and more importantly I am now two years with my permanent colostomy. I don't know what to do with this anniversary. When a loved one dies, socially past the first year I don't feel that it's widely acceptable to mark the day publicly anymore (not necessarily frowned on, but definitely not openly encouraged). But the grief waves still roll through; that change in your life resonates with you even when it feels everyone else has forgotten. My ostomy surgery was a good thing. It was also something to grieve about. I'm developing ways that I want to choose to mark it, but my running favorite right now is to choose to make a new change to benefit my body--this November, I'm working on getting back onto keto in earnest, and I am getting back into the pool again. Lap swimming has a bonus of stretching me cognitively, as I watch my body in suspended space, scanning for those sensations and what I'm feeling in those moments as muscle memory slowly reawakens.
It's practice, learning how to be with your emotions and your body. It's understanding that helps you connect them. It's a wholistic "you" that can grow out of it. Listening to your body is hard, particularly when it is telling you news that you don't want to hear, but it is an invaluable resource, cluing you in to pieces long before your brain can catch up.
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Hype Poisoning
I have put out a blog post before about my reluctance to like something just because it's popular, specifically referring to it as a "Hipster Mentality," but there is a piece that I want to better define, something that is actually a more accurate term in my case.
Hipster Mentality is more toward the idea of X is cool or uncool based on when you were exposed to it (i.e. "before it was cool"), how outside of popular culture a particular something was, and its value fluctuating when its popularity shifts. There's an element to this in how I approach things, that I don't expect something to be good because it's popular, that I prefer to weigh the opinions of people I trust over a broader public opinion, but then again I do read the reviews on Amazon products before I buy, noting the ones that have more positive reviews. This is a bit more scientific, running a survey with a large pool of voices to find a mean, but its popularity was probably how I found it in the first place. And there are still going to be those instances where I want to check something out of curiosity, to see what the fuss is about, such as a YouTube video phenomena.
I don't think that the things I like are less valuable when other people start to enjoy it--I got on the Harry Potter train just after book three was released, before the big BOOM that was book four. But this franchise has faded in my mind, not because it got popular but because of the other side of the coin--hype poisoning.
I think that rather than holding a "hipster mentality," I'm more sensitive to hype poisoning. Ever have a friend that was OBSESSED with that one TV show? That one. The one that everyone else seemed to be talking about? Imagine hearing about this particular show many, many times, gushing about how you NEED to watch it--maybe from the same source, maybe from different ones. Checking in with you to see if you have yet because you "will totally love it!" They quote the show at you even though the references are over your head, smiling at others who get the references in their own little club. There's a shift somewhere in there, where most anyone would go from willing to give the show a try one of these days to doing everything possible to avoid it.
For me, that line comes pretty quickly. The more I am assured that I'll just love it, it's amazing, etc., the further I dig in my heels against it. There is a way to check in and encourage without flipping this switch; more often, though, people turn me off of the things that they love than I would like to admit.
Here's my best example: I have zero interest in the Final Fantasy video game franchise. Rather, I have negative interest. A fan of the series with nostalgia glasses immediately balks when I say I haven't played any of these, that the story is just so good and I should definitely give them a try. Effectively, they've set back that "well, maybe I will give this a try" day back at least another six months. The longer the conversation and the more didactic it is, the longer that I am assured I will not have anything to do with this.
Related: shaming people for having not experienced a book, tv show, know who a celebrity is, etc. does not help the cause of sharing the experience with a new person.
For example, if someone were to say "I've never seen Star Wars."
Shaming responses:
- How have you not seen that?!
- Do you live under a rock?
- I'm going to make you watch it!
Encouraging responses:
- Oh, you're in for a treat!
- Would you like to watch it together sometime? I'd love to share it with you.
- That's okay. There are a lot of pop culture references that would make a lot more sense, if you'd like to see it sometime.
The likelihood of me actually trying out the show/movie/book is significantly decreased by the former, warmed significantly by the latter.
When something cannot live up to the hype, it has been hype poisoned. Or maybe it wasn't that good to begin with. Either way, we're in this awkward place of disappointed. In other words, being turned off of something entirely is acute hype poisoning. Something trying to live up to impossible expectations is its lesser form, but certainly the more common one.
For example, you've been told by so many people that a particular book was great, if it isn't a god amongst books, you may leave disappointed, having your expectations raised significantly. I try to actively prevent this when I am going on a trip--I don't want to overhype something in my mind that can inhibit my full experience of the trip, trying to compare something against an ideal. Sometimes, this means I actively won't talk about the details of an upcoming trip, to let it be what it is rather than expand on what I expect it to be.
So where's the line? That depends. If I have been berated for not having experienced something, once is enough, and any subsequent instance only affirms my disdain. However, telling me how much I'm going to love it, say, four times, even though it is kindly meant and not an order will start to make me suspicious, that the weight of expectation is there and does not allow me to experience whatever it is fully. In short, hype poisoning can be instantenous or a slowly accumulating condition. Andy has adjusted to this, knowing that he can only push a suggestion so far before he needs to let me come around to it on my own time; by contrast I've learned not to be surprised when he hasn't seen one movie or another and offer opportunity but not expectation. There are other times, too, where we will be very direct, along the lines of "this is something that's very important to me, and I would like to share it with you, if that's okay." This involves a request for consent and a clear intention--if a small gesture can mean a lot to the other, of course we'll weigh that into the decision, but it's still a choice rather than a decree.
We all like to share the things that we enjoy, but how we share them is still important.
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
[Insert Witty Title Here]
Well, it's Tuesday morning, and frankly I have nothing prepared for the blog.
I'm finding a small moment with my thoughts between getting the kettle going and setting up the French press for some coffee (some of the Hawaii coffee we brought back, specifically).
The truth is (and you may have inferred by the week where I neglected to post anything) that I've been having some difficulty in finding that right writing space of late. I think, though, that I've at least pinpointed part of the problem: I've not allowed myself to sit with my thoughts much recently. The closest I have been was in going to therapy, a fascilitated self-reflection.
I miss that time.
But with work as busy as its been, the class I'm taking, trying to arrange all the other doctor appointments before our deductible reboots again, a smattering of hanging out, and a two week vacation in a time zone five hours removed, I haven't taken this space. And, boy, am I feeling it.
As I'm waking in the morning, I prefer to slowly acclimate to the day, a hold-over for when I literally needed an hour for my morning medications to kick in before I could approach any semblance of functioning. But I like being able to drift through the process of readying, letting my mind wander while I dry off or put on makeup or whathaveyou. In the last few weeks, I've had something on more or less constantly, a new YouTube video queued up behind the next to keep a constant drone of noise. It's an escape, but I'm not wholly sure what from yet because I haven't stopped to ask.
It's not that I need to plan in more "me time;" it's more that I need to restructure how I'm doing it.
I've let a number of habits go recently. And there is a natural ebb and flow to other facets of my life, where this might simply be a "season" that needs to pass through. I've used NaNoWriMo a couple of times to get me back into writing, either by completing it or, as in the past few years of this blog, acknowledging the spirit of it. I'm trying to pinpoint what other instigators I need to jumpstart those other habits again.
And it starts with sitting with myself. No added input. No directed thoughts. Between meetings, between conversations, between pauses of breath.
I'm finding a small moment with my thoughts between getting the kettle going and setting up the French press for some coffee (some of the Hawaii coffee we brought back, specifically).
The truth is (and you may have inferred by the week where I neglected to post anything) that I've been having some difficulty in finding that right writing space of late. I think, though, that I've at least pinpointed part of the problem: I've not allowed myself to sit with my thoughts much recently. The closest I have been was in going to therapy, a fascilitated self-reflection.
I miss that time.
But with work as busy as its been, the class I'm taking, trying to arrange all the other doctor appointments before our deductible reboots again, a smattering of hanging out, and a two week vacation in a time zone five hours removed, I haven't taken this space. And, boy, am I feeling it.
As I'm waking in the morning, I prefer to slowly acclimate to the day, a hold-over for when I literally needed an hour for my morning medications to kick in before I could approach any semblance of functioning. But I like being able to drift through the process of readying, letting my mind wander while I dry off or put on makeup or whathaveyou. In the last few weeks, I've had something on more or less constantly, a new YouTube video queued up behind the next to keep a constant drone of noise. It's an escape, but I'm not wholly sure what from yet because I haven't stopped to ask.
It's not that I need to plan in more "me time;" it's more that I need to restructure how I'm doing it.
I've let a number of habits go recently. And there is a natural ebb and flow to other facets of my life, where this might simply be a "season" that needs to pass through. I've used NaNoWriMo a couple of times to get me back into writing, either by completing it or, as in the past few years of this blog, acknowledging the spirit of it. I'm trying to pinpoint what other instigators I need to jumpstart those other habits again.
And it starts with sitting with myself. No added input. No directed thoughts. Between meetings, between conversations, between pauses of breath.
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