Growing up in my sixties was a full-time job. There was an intense early period in which the insights came so fast and furiously that I was channeling Lucy Ricardo in the chocolate factory. I’m still a work in progress (don’t you love the open-ended optimism of that?) so I expect to continue to be visited by the odd flash of brilliance. In the meantime, here are a few nuggets, in no particular order, that I unearthed from my earlier scribblings. Note that many will be obvious to the more well-adjusted among us, but that they were all big news to me.
It’s possible to suffer from extreme anxiety and not know it. It’s hilarious to me now, but I seriously had not even an inkling that I might be afflicted with anxiety. With high strung behavior as the family norm, any type of vulnerability seen as weakness, and no education on the topic, the possibility just never occurred to me. I lived so far inside my head that I had no idea what I was feeling, ever. The tightness in my throat, the pit in my stomach, the adrenaline surges, were all business as usual and didn’t even register. If I thought about it at all, I’d have defined anxiety as an irrational fear of or worry about something. And there was nothing irrational about it: there would be negative consequences if I didn’t do or say what was expected of me.
Self-forgiveness really does come first. I struggled for years with the concept of forgiveness. I would read entire books on the subject, and even when I eventually, grudgingly bought into the idea, I was at a complete loss as to execution. I’d catch myself mentally cursing my ex-husband, or experiencing unchecked schadenfreude at learning of a minor misfortune of a friend who had ghosted me, or actually sneering at the thought of my short-lived boyfriend. And yes, on some level I knew that I was also pissed off at myself for accepting mistreatment or foolishly trusting the wrong people; that I also needed to forgive myself. But it wasn’t until I really got brave enough to examine my role in these situations (not just what I or the other person did wrong, but who we were and how we had perceived each other and how that affected our behavior) that I could begin to muster even a bit of compassion for everyone involved. This was the turning point that allowed me to begin to entertain the possibility of forgiveness somewhere in the future. Later I would wrestle with questions of what forgiveness looks like and if there are, in fact, some things that are unforgivable. In the meantime, learning that self-forgiveness is required on a daily basis relieved me of a strain that felt like trying to do advanced math in an unfamiliar foreign language.
Self-care is a real thing. When you’re not a real grownup, no matter how adult and responsible an exterior you present, you’re driven by this fantasy that someone or something is going to rescue you some day, so you don’t have to be the one to take care of yourself. Chances are better than even that you’re also self-loathing enough to think that you’re somehow lacking the ability to do so, or that you don’t deserve that care. Before I began to heal, my “self-care” consisted solely of escape (retail therapy, a bottle of wine, an expensive trip), which no doubt contributed to my initial skepticism about what I considered a cliched buzzword. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that adequate nutrition (including something as simple as plenty of water) and sleep, moderate exercise, and a bit of solitude balanced with a bit of healthy connection with others led to a remarkable, steady improvement in my mental health.
Normalcy can feel like boredom. Marinating in chaos and negativity for so many years normalized my constant careening about with my hair on fire. There were dramas to star in, problems to solve, people to please. So that when things finally settled down after my world erupted, peace felt like boredom at best, if not a problem. My lizard brain was working overtime, shouting at me that something was wrong and I needed to DO SOMETHING immediately. After several years of frequent struggle in which I excelled at manufacturing and “solving” imaginary problems, I became able to mostly recognize these thoughts and redirect them instead of jumping on the crazy train. I’m not sure my lizard brain will ever give up, but I’ve made great strides in ignoring it.
Overcorrection is tempting. Working toward self-awareness meant analyzing and accepting responsibility for a number of past mistakes. Until I had racked up a bit of lived experience successfully interpreting and acting on my feelings, it was difficult to trust my judgment. Like an inexperienced driver, my reflex was to overcorrect. Because I’d previously stayed in a toxic situation for far too long, I was tempted to abandon ship at the slightest conflict in a new relationship. Because I spent so many years overcompensating and overachieving to claim my right to existence, I temporarily became totally unmoored and unmotivated. It took a lot of time and practice to gain enough confidence to consistently resist this urge to overcorrect.
Change always means loss, but it also means growth. One of my favorite and most helpful pauses these days is meditation. Once I realized that there was no right way and that I didn’t have to be good at it, that I just had to sit quietly, I was a convert. Not long ago I was meditating on an upcoming, scary change, and a mantra of sorts popped into my head: no change without loss, no growth without change, no point without growth. I’ve sustained heavy losses as I’ve grown, of dreams, of things, and most heartbreakingly, of people. I’ve also gained more than I ever imagined was possible. And I’m convinced that the whole point of this mortal coil is to keep growing. Remembering that helps me to face the fear of loss and be more open to change.
Thoughtful doesn’t always have to mean serious. Maybe it’s because I’d never felt seen or heard. Or maybe it’s because I’d spent a lifetime litigating in my head. Whatever the case, it’s a wonder there are people who still genuinely enjoy being around me, because in the early days of my healing, when I made my first attempts at communicating honestly, I was a major drag. Wracked with anxiety about the whole endeavor, I’d defensively vomit my thoughts all over the other person, heedless of time or place, relentlessly belaboring my point. This was deathly serious stuff, damn it. As I relaxed more into self-acceptance and confidence, I learned that I didn’t have to take every single thought I had seriously, nor was I obligated to share each one. It took a while, but tolerance and humor began to find their way back into both my thoughts and their expression.
Adversity breeds compassion. I had always considered myself a compassionate person. I was definitely an empath, absorbing the feelings of those around me for better or for worse. And I knew a bit about suffering: at twenty-six I lost the man I was on the verge of marrying to a fatal motorcycle accident. But it wasn’t until I experienced a period of unremitting and unfixable adversity that I understood I’d been a novice. Living in your own personal hellscape awakens you to the magnitude and variety of suffering that exists and the knowledge that most of us don’t advertise. You wake up to the fact that almost everybody is going through something, and you soften. Sadly, you also realize that the people who exacerbate your suffering by showing a lack of compassion have rarely experienced even a moment of adversity. And eventually you also have compassion for them, because they have no clue that that can change in an instant.
Therapy doesn’t work in a vacuum. This is the bad news for those of us who live in our heads. You can learn all about your patterns and you can use tools to be more effective but, like learning a foreign language, you need to practice before you see results. Knowing rationally that someone who loved me would not abandon me for speaking a truth they might not like, or for changing in a way that might not benefit them, is a world away from actually experiencing this reality, in big and little ways, over and over again. Banking a bit of lived experience that contradicted all of my prior beliefs and behaviors increased my proficiency, built my confidence, and validated all of my efforts. I was working smarter, not harder.
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Let’s talk! Are there simple but profound truths that you’ve discovered along the way? That guide you?