As a child, the biggest night of my year was Christmas Eve. In our house, Christmas Eve was the night Santa came to deliver our presents. My brother and I would wake our parents up at the butt crack of dawn so we could race into the front room to see the loot left behind. There were two simple, yet strictly enforced rules for the chunk of time where we went to bed Christmas Eve and woke up Christmas morning.
- We were not (repeat NOT) to go into the front room without both parents present at the doorway Christmas morning;
- Once we went to bed Christmas Eve night we were to stay there under threat of Santa skipping our house and taking our presents with him.
These were the only two rules set by my parents that I never tested the limitations.
I would lie awake in bed straining to listen for Santa working in the front room or faint jingles of reindeer bells. My mind making a mental note of every toy I’d picked out in the JCPenney’s special Christmas edition catalog and daydreaming of playing happily with each one.
The worst part of Christmas morning was standing outside the front room, staring at the closed door waiting for one parent or the other to be ready and present to open the door to the wonderland on the other side. The anticipation of what was to come always ate at me and I could never understand why they weren’t as excited or anxious as I was.
Finally sweet relief when the last straggling parent would show up and we would get the green light to go in…. And wow! Look at this! Look at that! Thank you Santa for my new Cabbage Patch Kid! …but wait…what about the Easy Bake Oven I asked for? Or the My Little Pony I wanted? First world brat problems, I know.
The new toys I’d gotten didn’t seem as exciting once the disappointment had set in. They were stupid even, and I didn’t even really want them, I wanted the toys I didn’t get. I was too focused on what I didn’t have, focused on the disappointment, angry that my brother had gotten what he had asked for and more (even though really I had too).
Reality just didn’t add up to the picture I had created in my mind. That happens to us all the time. We create a scenario or fantasy about a situation or how a person is going to be. Sometimes it happens as we pictured it, but most times it doesn’t.
I usually associate daydreams and fantasies with positive things: the knight in shining armor who rescues me, sinking the winning shot, winning the big award…when they don’t happen the way we picture them we are left with disappointment. But, we create scenarios in our head that are negative too. Afraid to drive because we’re afraid we’ll get into a wreck, misinterpreting a look a friend gave us to mean they’re mad at us, or getting up to give a presentation and totally flubbing our words.
Now what about the really dark scenarios we create? I once had a panic attack because my parents didn’t answer their phones for a few hours. In my mind, the only logical explanation for this was because they were dead. I can only imagine the bewilderment on my dad’s face when he finally answered the phone on the twentieth call to me hyperventilating and crying hysterically.
If you have anxiety and panic attacks I imagine you do this too. My chest feeling tight automatically means I’m having a heart attack. My boyfriend looked at another girl so he’s going to cheat on me. I did bad on this project for work so they’re going to fire me. We jump to the worst case scenario. For me, I jump to the worst case scenario because I need to maintain a sense of control. I need to be emotionally prepared. What’s my biggest fear? My parents dying. It’s too painful and overwhelming of a thought, so in my mind it’s like creating these scenarios will help me be emotionally prepared for it to happen.
But what agony! I couldn’t function! And, it was all for nothing. They were fine. They were having a game night with their friends while I was sitting on my couch inconsolable. Our brains can’t tell the difference from us catastrophizing and from us actually facing a physical threat to our lives. Our brains will release all the chemicals we need to help us survive a bear attack – an actual physical threat – and our body has no choice but to ride the wave of those chemicals. I’ll talk more about this in a later post.
Back to anticipation…
When I got the call from my dad on June 4th that they had found a mass on my mom’s brain I had a complete meltdown. For days. Because I was facing one of my biggest fears. A tumor on the brain? In my mind it meant death. She was going to die, and die within days. I threw myself into anticipatory grief.
Anticipatory grief is a real thing. I was mourning her while she was still alive. She’s walking around cracking jokes hours after brain surgery, and I’m only focused on the image I was creating in my mind about what life would be like when she’s gone.
If there’s anticipatory grief, then there’s other emotions we anticipate…anxiety, anger, and sadness for example. Keep track of how many times you do this – positive and negative. What emotions do you feel while you’re fantasizing or catastrophizing? How do those emotions affect your behavior?
We can think and imagine ourselves into depression; into an anxiety attack and a rage. I can picture how I think interactions with a person will go and can work myself up into a rage. Without even speaking to the person! Then what happens when I finally do speak to them? I’m already poised for a fight and can make it into something more than it had to be.
Thoughts, feelings, and behavior all go hand-in-hand. Change one and they all change. In either direction. That’s what I was saying in my previous blog about gratitude. Even when we’re faced with our worst fears, we have to stay grounded in the moment and face reality for what it truly is – not the warped reality our fear has created in our mind.
Focus on the positive. Focus on the truth. Create a mantra to say to keep you grounded. After I realized what I was doing with my mother, I created the mantra:
“In this moment I am safe. In this moment everything is OK.”
It may literally be a moment-by-moment situation that you’re in, but staying present and grounded is your foundation to being resilient and not allowing yourself to slip into the downward spiral.
This week’s challenge? 1. Create your grounding mantra. 2. Keep a record of the scenarios you create in your mind and how they affect your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
Unbound Light 