anxiety 101: when you gotta go...
Of course, it can get easier.
Cohabitation with that anxious brain, I mean.
At first, it’s so much work.
You hate that you have to keep tabs on your physical state - ain’t nobody got time for a BODY SCAN. Not in this economy! Not in this presidency! Not in this ONLY FORTY DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS.
At first, all you can think about is the way constant monitoring takes you out of the other things you wanted to be doing.
“I was trying to write and I kept wondering if I was anxious now… or now… or now…”
“I was trying to get my kids out the door and I had to stop packing lunches so I could do some yoga because I was starting to feel like spontaneous self-immolation wasn’t off the table anymore.”
How irritating. How distracting. You have to stop what you’re doing and address yourself. You have to interrupt yourself in the middle of the fun or important work you were doing so you can ANSWER your body, which doesn’t EVER leave a voicemail. Anxiety just keeps calling you back and calling you back, the way I do with Ryan when I have an URGENT question about whether we have any plans for August 9.
Over time you learn to accept that it’s not catastrophic to periodically pause. Over time you look around Costco on Saturday morning and realize that most of the people around you are breathing for panic management. We all have to step back from the stuff we’d rather be doing when the pressure builds up to the point that we have to answer the call of—
Wait.
Wait a TICK.
Holy shit, I’m potty training my anxiety right now.
When was the last time you potty trained a child?
To refresh your memory, what do you think the hardest thing about potty training is?
a) Teaching your child to flush.
b) Teaching your child to take off their own pants.
c) Teaching your child that when they have to go, they HAVE TO GO. They don’t get to pick when their body calls them. They don’t get a choice about the distraction, the interruption, the irritating call that only gets louder. The only choice they have in the matter is whether they go in a toilet or go in their Batman shorts.
The answer is A. IT’S A.
But for the sake of the narrative here, we’ll say the answer is C.
The ironic thing is that even though a trip to the toilet feels WAY more intrusive to a child in the ecstatic throes of a Play Doh sesh, the reality is that soiled Batman shorts (and legs, and socks, and chair, and floor, and maybe carpet if the universe knows you were planning to have a dinner party tonight) actually take WAY longer to clean up and constitute a far more disruptive event.
Me: I can see you’re a little uncomfortable right now. How about we take a quick break to pee?
Kid: No! I have to finish this!
Me: Let’s take 2 minutes to relieve the pressure, buddy. This will wait.
Kid: I can HOLD IT!
Me: Are you sure?
Kid: YES.
Me (knowing that you can’t really FORCE a child to pee because it feels icky for everyone and you don’t want to start a power struggle over the toilet because we’ve all heard the stories of when potty training goes wrong): Ooooookay. You’re the boss of your body.
Kid: I am the boss.
Me: Just remember that no matter what, that pee is going to come out eventu—uh oh.
Kid: … yeah.
This is how I still feel about my anxiety sometimes. “I don’t WANT to stop my life and FEEL BETTER. I’ll just HOLD IT FOREVER and— uh oh.” Truth be told, that’s how I still feel about going pee sometimes, too. I don’t have TIME to PEE.
Bet you do, says my body.
I don’t have TIME to ADDRESS my FEELINGS.
Let’s make time, says my body.
NO.
You sure?
YES.
Okey dokey.
REALLY?
Absolutely. You’re the boss.
HA! I AM THE BOSS. I’M THE BIG HAIRY BAD BITCH BOSS OF MY—
But now THIS is gonna happen.
HOLY SHIT I’M FREAKING OUT.
And THAT’s how a grown-ass lady ends up soiling her anxiety pants. Again.
The good news? We get better. We acquire tools, and I’m not just talking about a miracle carpet cleaner.
And maybe most important of all, we learn. Not just what works in terms of living with anxiety. But we learn to accept that our mental health, like a bladder, is an intake-output system.
I take a big, piping hot gulp of local news. I sip all day from an insulated straw cup filled with parenting, the budget, everything I’ve failed to do this week, and the fact that I wore my least favorite underwear today. YES, that’s a factor. I polish off a bowl of professional failure broth and I get another refill on my bottomless existential dread mocktail.
That shit is going to be processed, and it’s going to come out, one way or another.
At some point, I learned, like children do, that mind is not, in fact, always over bladder.
At some point, I accepted that spitting out anxiety was part of my body’s natural daily experience of living, as much a part of my body as hunger, thirst, and the inevitable aftermath of hunger and thirst.
And at some point I decided it was worth it to pause, answer the call, take care of business, and get back to the day, relieved, never regretting that I took the time to make myself more comfortable.
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