Transcript: Episode 99
99. Doing It Afraid (Cycle of Anxiety)
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[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
I’m at the park with my daughter, out of town from home, so maybe you can hear cars driving by or the cicadas in the tree, because it’s a hot day in summer. But I have all six children here with me. Five of them are going to deaf camp during the day, but staying with me each night in a hotel, and so the youngest needed to play. And if I’m going to be able to share things with you for a podcast, this is the best I can do.
It’s a beautiful summer day, but very, very summer. Like many places in the midwest, we’re having a heatwave that is more than just the usual temperatures. We’ve spent a lot of time in the pool, but that’s kind of a hard place to record a podcast - from inside a pool. Although I guess we’ve done one at the pool, but here there’s shade at least, where I can sit and watch her play and be close if she needs me, but where she can be independent enough I can talk for a moment.
There is something I wanted to share that I read about the anxiety that so often comes with trauma. It talked about the cycle of anxiety. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it before and I looked on the internet and there’s several different versions of it, but what I learned was kind of helpful for me, and I wanted to share.
There’s always the underlying worry and panic and anxiety - that’s a part of trauma. Lots of people have an underlying anxiety that is maybe full of worry or even sometimes panic. But often, those worries are about things that won’t happen, which is why they’re so maladaptive, as they say. The problem with trauma is that things really did happen, and it’s hard to know if they’ll happen again or not, which makes it more difficult to reassure yourself or someone else that everything’s okay.
So when we have those feelings, we’re good at dissociating them - to numb out, to not feel, to not think about what’s too scary to deal with every day, to shut yourself away from what’s been too hard for too long. And what we’ve learned from the workbook is that that’s called avoidance. There are other ways people avoid too - sometimes with drugs or alcohol or by being too busy with work.
Another family has come to play at the playground so you may hear some laughing. And I just say that because I know it’s a trigger for some. But everything’s okay and now time is safe and it’s just children on the playground - outside children on the playground.
It’s interesting to me because that’s what it sounds like to me in my head all the time, like children playing in the background, as if they were on a playground - some of them laughing and squealing, some of them chattering, some of them crying. It’s just always there, a dull roar in the back of my head, sometimes sounding far away and sometimes intrusive and close and loud.
So I’m trying to ground myself a bit and remember what I wanted to talk about today. Avoidance… it’s always avoidance. Avoidance isn’t always a bad thing.
[Children yelling and cars going by]
For example, us coming here to avoid being stuck in the hotel room all day long, that’s fair and healthy and the right thing to do. Sometimes it’s even safe, like coming here to the park in the morning, early, before the heat comes. We’re avoiding the heat, but that is the safe and right thing to do. It’s healthy and good and normal.
So dissociating is the same. When we’re young and when we’re little and when we’re in danger, it’s the safe and healthy and appropriate response for coping with so much danger, for coping with so much that is too much, for coping with things that are too hard that no child should have to endure. It makes sense.
[Airplane engine]
It makes sense.
I guess part of what I’m learning is that what’s adaptive at some point can be maladaptive at another point, either in time or a different context or in different functioning. Dissociating because I need to, or to stay alive, or to stay safe, or to protect myself in some way when I’m very young is a different thing altogether, than dissociating to function as an adult, when I am safe. I know it’s more complicated than that and I don’t mean that I have it all figured out. I just mean that I’m learning about the process and why we have to do this work that is so hard, and how it’s helpful to stay in therapy and to learn, to do things differently than in the past.
Part of it is because those who are stuck, or those parts of me that are stuck, are there in a time and a place of such terror and horror, that I ought not leave them there, ought not act out what was done to me by doing it to them again now.
[Children playing]
It’s a heavy responsibility, because it’s not an easy thing to go in and rescue them - to find them and to help them, to listen or read the things that they have to say and the things that they have to share.
So that temporary relief and the temporary -- so that’s when the worry and the panic and the anxiety comes back, because to stay present or to help them or to come full circle means going back to those places or at least tolerating the feelings and the experiences of having been there in the first place…in a way like we’ve avoided all this time.
That’s why it’s a cycle because the avoidance helps at first, but then as we realize that avoidance doesn’t work forever, or that sometimes avoidance makes things harder or more complicated, then the anxiety comes back, because we still have to face the things that have been waiting all this time. And part of what comes then, in the cycle, before we’re back to worry and panic, is the loss of confidence that comes, because avoidance didn’t work. It may feel like we failed because we did things wrong. Or it may feel like we aren’t good enough, because we could survive, but now have all these other complicated problems that other people don’t seem to have. Or maybe we feel good enough -- or maybe we just don’t feel good enough, because no one ever said we were, and we never have been. Or maybe we just don’t feel good enough, because we never were for anyone.
Sometimes, to be honest, I even feel like I wasn’t good enough for myself, because I understand, in my head,in some way of trying to grasp at this experience of having DID, I understand at some level that it was protective. I’ve made it far enough in therapy to understand that piece and to hold onto that piece, that I wasn’t bad just because this happened. But where I feel like I failed is why even that wasn’t enough, because creating someone inside or someone inside coming or coming to help or someone inside splitting off -- whatever words you want to use for it --if I had been enough, then why did we need another and then another and then another and then another.
So I feel guilty that it’s so hard now or that there’s so many of us now. As if I failed even in trying to protect myself. As if even in my one legitimate coping skill of dissociating, I couldn’t do it right either. That’s how it feels on a hard day.
But also, I’m learning, so slowly, but I’m trying and I’m learning, that they have different roles, and they did different things for me, and that we protected each other from different aspects of all that was going on. I didn’t understand that, actually, until this week, and something big happened this week.
I made a friend by accident. I wasn’t trying and I didn’t mean to and it’s kind of a long story, but it’s another “medical mama” - someone who has a child who’s like my daughter, who’s often sick and in the hospital. And we met through our children.
But what drew us together was a history that we shared, not exactly and not in detail and I’m not here to tell her story, but just in that we’ve both been through hard things in the past, and we’ve dealt with it in different ways. But she said she had come to a place of understanding that what happened to her and the way she handled what happened to her is part of who she became and who she is now and that she’s okay with that. And these were powerful words to me that gave me courage. They were powerful words to me that taught me a new understanding of all that I had been through myself. And somehow gave me hope for understanding in a new way that healing can still come.
So what I learned about the cycle of anxiety is that in the beginning, when we’re anxious or in danger or have been through trauma, then part of our response through anxiety, through panic, and even through dissociation, is to keep us safe from our environment. We learn how to scan our environment for danger. We learn how to notice our physical symptoms that warn us that something’s about to happen. We learn how to pay attention to little things, or specific triggers. And we learn how to shift internally, to adapt and respond to those triggers.
Sometimes that’s in a big way, like we have one for the mother and one for the father. Sometimes that’s in functioning ways, like having one that goes to school and who now works. And sometimes it’s in more subtle ways, like having ones who come because you’re scared to make friends and now all the sudden you have some. But what if I can learn to do it myself? What if I can make my own friends and stay present and stay strong? Not that I wasn’t strong before, but strong in new ways that are both healing and freeing that give me practice in safe environments of just being myself. Because escaping through avoidance helps in the short-term. It does more than just help. It saves us. It protects us. It keeps us alive. But in the long-term it causes problems with physical symptoms that keep going even when we’re safe.
That’s what our friend, Jane, and I have been talking about with the ACEs and the way it impacts our body and causes illnesses that complicate things even further, or makes life even harder than it already was. It also teaches us the habit of worry and of predicting what could go wrong. Which when we were young, maybe kept us safe, but long-term, it keeps us from enjoying what is good, or even noticing what is good. And so we’re back to high, thich walls that don’t let in anything that nourishes us, and we become starved and hungry and locked up in our own world, which is different than what happened to us when we were young.
It acts out in a cry for help internally…what we once endured, externally…it’s a reflection of how hard things were and how bad things were. But it holds us prisoner still instead of setting us free. And what was once a coping mechanism, what was once a way to protect ourselves and keep ourselves safe, simply becomes a behavior, which is different than a function or a solution, and that’s why it’s maladaptive. It’s not me that’s maladaptive, it’s the behavior, meaning it doesn’t work effectively anymore. It doesn’t do what it once did. I am no longer in the context that I once was. Now time is safe. Now time is good. Now time is beautiful. And I don’t want to miss it.
And I don’t just mean that I am more important than the Others inside, or that I have a right to life and they don’t, but what I mean is that they need to know that we have this. They need to know that we made it. They need to know. They need to experience it too, this time in our life, where everything is okay, and people are good and safe, and where we have enough, even when life is hard, and even when life is hard with normal challenges that all families face, we are okay. And we are not alone.
We have The Husband and we have the therapist and now we even have friends.
[Wind blowing]
And this new friend that I made at the hospital -- well, my daughter made friends first and so now I’ve become friends with her -- so now I’ve become friends with her friend’s mom. It’s the first time I’ve had a mom friend in that way. I never have before. It’s been too hard and too scary, and I’ve been really good at avoidance, which makes it difficult to develop any relationships.
[Birds chirping]
I don’t go to school functions. I don’t talk at the school. I don’t talk with other parents. I don’t talk with other parents when I’m at school functions. I don’t go out of my way to connect with other parents in those ways. But for whatever reason, this time, it clicked. This time it worked, maybe because we were at the park, next to the hospital, which is across the street from the therapist’s office, and so we felt safe here, because we so often come here.
I don’t know why it happened. It felt bigger than us, bigger than just me, bigger than an arrangement of a play date, or any circumstantial happenstance. It felt spiritual in a way even, the way you see evidence of the wind in the trees. And she was safe.
[Wind blowing]
We were both shy, but the therapist told me I could do it and she coached me through it and she said I could do it afraid. She said I didn’t have to be unafraid before I made friends. She said I could start while I was still afraid. She said that that’s what it means to have courage, that’s what it means to be brave and strong, to do it afraid. And so I did. I came and I stayed present and I talked with her, this mom, who understands what it’s like for things to be hard when you’re young.
We understand it differently. We have different experiences and we’re pacing the friendship well. It’s not like we know all the details or that one of us needs to trauma dump on the other, but she is solid enough, and safe enough, and real enough, that it was worth doing the work to try to connect. And it felt good. It felt liberating that all the sudden, I was not alone in the world. It felt good to hear someone who understood, to meet someone, who’s trying to do all things normal, when nothing feels normal inside.
And because of the level of authenticity that we share in our friendship already, which maybe only comes because we both have children fighting for their lives, but because of this I shared, for the first time, with anyone, that I have a dissociative disorder. I didn’t throw everything at her at once. I didn’t give it a name more than that. I didn’t say DID, although I did talk about Parts of me vaguely, briefly. I didn’t say any names or explain how distinct those Parts are, partly because we’re just new to each other, partly because I wanted to feel it out first, partly because I wanted to see first if she would stay.
But she did, and her response was genuine and perfect and kind and gracious. Her questions were real and not intrusive, and she didn’t push anymore than I wanted to go. And for now I’ve left things there. But what an amazing thing it is to me to have someone who is safe, to be able to say things out loud, to know that there is someone out there that simply knows.
When we talk about attunement or connection or healing that comes through attachment and friendship and with another outside of yourself, this was a moment of that. It was huge for me. It was so big and it was so real and it was so raw, but it was also safe and also good and also wonderful, not that they were good things to talk about, but that it was an okay thing to talk about that I had permission to just be me, all of me. And not only that, that I could be all of me, without having to be one of me.
So often, my world is so compartmentalized that one person knows part of me and another person knows part of me, and they don’t mix very well or very much or very often. And so it makes it difficult for me to establish a relationship or a friendship with the other Parts of me, because their friendship is so based on just part of me.
But this, for the first time, was different, because I was starting out as all of me, not that I’m finished in therapy, and not that I know what will happen if someone comes out specifically sometime. And not that I know what will happen if we switch sometime when we’re with her, or if something embarrassing happens because of the DID while we’re playing with the children or talking sometime on the phone. I don’t know how I would handle that or how she would handle that, but that’s back to the worry cycle, the anxiety of just trying to have a friend, of just trying to heal, of just trying to be me, because I don’t want to be in pieces forever.
[Children playing]
I don’t want anyone to disappear or go away. I’m not trying to get rid of anyone or silence anyone, but I want to be all of me, and I want to be fluid as the river, being able to go where I want to go and do what I want to do, without losing chunks of it along the way, without losing pieces of me on the way, without not remembering where I’ve been and what I’ve done. And this morning was hope for that, when she responded the way that she did to what I shared, even though what I gave was such a tiny fleck. But also, that was good, because we are new friends and that’s good boundaries. I don’t need to say everything right away. I don’t need to tell everything right now. But what I have given, she has held and she has carried and she has not spilled it, and that feels good and safe.
And even if we don’t become more friends than that, this was an experience I will not forget. This was an experience of doing it afraid, instead of staying in the anxiety cycle, of, “I’m sorry that my child has a friend, but I can’t become friends with the mom, because I’m too afraid.” This was different. I faced my fear and I confronted it and I stayed present and I had a positive experience where everything was okay and that was amazing.
[Wind blowing]
I may not get this right. I don’t know how things will go, because I’ve not had a friend before, in my space, who lives where I do, who knows the things that she knows, and not just inside things, but outside things too, like the lives of my children and what it’s like to have a child in the hospital all the time. There’s so much we share, so much that brings us together easily, but I don’t know that -- but that guarantees nothing and it doesn't teach me how to be a friend.
I will have to learn. I’ve learned some. I’ve learned some from people who listen to the podcast. I’ve learned some from the therapist and from my husband, but this is new. This is different than anything else before, and I will have to learn along the way. I will have to keep facing that anxiety cycle, and I will have to keep doing it afraid, but I think that’s okay. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be. Maybe that’s how other people learn it. Maybe that’s how my daughter is learning it now on the playground as I watch her play. Maybe that’s as normal as things get, learning along the way. And maybe that means healing has already begun.
[Cicadas]
Maybe that’s the start of me being me.
[Break]
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