anxiety – Pamela Helberg

F is for Feelings (and Fight, Flight, Freeze)

Published on April 8, 2022 by Pam1 Comment

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. –Victor Frankl

For a species that has been gifted with the ability to name and express our feelings and needs, we humans sure are terrible at it. Instead of allowing ourselves to feel, we do everything in our power to not feel. We eat. We run. We nap. We bully. We hit, yell, scream. Withdraw. We reach for a bottle or a pill or an edible.

If we grew up getting the message that it’s not okay to have feelings and emotions, we might not even know what we are feeling at any given time, other than to know we don’t like it. I can remember being a very emotional 15-year-old (like most 15-year-old humans), and my dad saying to me “We do not have emotions is this house, young lady.” His solution was to take my concerns to Jesus through prayer. That solution never really worked for me, though I tried mightily. Others of you, Dear Reader, may have heard similar messages. Something like “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” or “boys don’t cry” or “big girls don’t pout.” All messages designed to help our caregivers/parents feel more comfortable but none of which did anything to get to the heart of the matter: what we were feeling and more importantly why and what could be done.

Fortunately, The Center for Nonviolent Communication has published a list of Feelings divided into two categories:

Feelings when my needs are satisfied
Feelings when my needs are not satisfied

They have also published a list of needs to which we can refer when we are having feelings about unsatisfied needs. For example, if I wake up irritable, and I sink into a morning mood of anger and despair for no clear reason that I can determine on my own, I might look at the needs inventory in order to figure out what I need in order to change my feelings. What need is not being met?

I help clients walk through the process of identifying their feelings, encouraging them to sit with their emotions, to (as my own therapist used to tell me) invite the feelings in for tea and get to know them. I help my clients figure out what they need based on their identified feelings. We also work at sitting with the feelings, getting comfortable feeling uncomfortable and recognizing that feelings come and go and don’t actually hurt us. Feelings are based on thoughts and stories we create about those thoughts.

One example I use often and one that most people, especially Gen Z, seem to related to best is not getting a response when we send a text message. The most common assumption about text silence is that whomever we are waiting for a response from must hate us. Think about it . . . what assumptions and stories do you create when you don’t hear back after sending a text message? Some of us, a few, just figure their person is busy and get on with their day. Others struggle. Some people spiral and assume the absolute worst has happened: death, break ups, hatred, that somehow in the matter of a few minutes or an hour that they have lost the love of their nearest and dearest. Tragically and irrevocably.

We engage in this behavior because as human beings, we are wired for danger and anxiety. Anxiety kept us safe on the savannah. Worrying about danger, real or imagined, kept us from being eaten by lions or from being kidnapped by the strangers who live downriver. Our danger alert systems, our fight, flight, (fawn), and freeze responses are overly well-honed for this current world, and so overreact to smaller, non-life-threatening, perceived dangers.

Sometimes we seem to be held captive by these fears and anxieties, immobilized by imagined dangers. How can we overcome them? How can we learn to not make up stories and to not believe the worst-case scenarios that sometimes feel overwhelming?

Mindfulness helps. Meditation helps. Simple strategies such as slowing down enough to breathe when we start to have an uncomfortable feeling, giving ourselves enough time to choose our reaction. We can choose how to respond. If. We. Slow. Down. And when we have choices, we have power. We have control. We no longer feel like victims, buffeted by our emotions. We learn that we can feel uncomfortable feelings and not be undone by them. We can learn to not automatically think (and believe) the worst-case scenario.

But it takes practice.

Just like those I work with, I’m not always adept at being able to identify my own feelings and needs. Like most folks, I am eager to chase away the uncomfortable feelings—I’d rather not sit with anxiety or anger, bewilderment or burn-out. And like everyone else who is human, I get really good at developing strategies for not feeling my feelings.

One helpful strategy that nearly always works, I learned from Buddhist meditation teacher and psychologist/author Tara Brach. The technique is called RAIN and stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture. In short, we first recognize we are having an uncomfortable feeling and we allow ourselves to feel it, instead of chasing it away, getting more comfortable with being (temporarily) uncomfortable. Eventually we learn that the discomfort will pass. Then we can create some space around the feeling and investigate it—how familiar is it? How big is it? When did we first feel it? How old is that feeling? Where in our bodies do we feel it? Focus on that part of our body and breathe into it. Ask yourself, what do I need in this moment to feel better?

Finally, we nurture ourselves. Hold our hand to our heart and press, releasing dopamine and oxytocin, happy hormones to counteract the adrenaline and cortisol the anxiety and fear produce. We can nurture ourselves.

We can learn that feelings come and feelings go and we don’t have to be held captive by them.

A is for Ack! It’s April Already and I am Anxious

Published on April 2, 2016 by Pam9 Comments

I can’t believe I haven’t finished my first blog for the A to Z challenge yet. I’ve been thinking about it for weeks, planning, scheming, writing it in my head, but clearly I’ve not put any words down yet. Until now. These few, uninspired, last minute words that seem so unequal to the task, so small and worthless and hurried.

A is for Apology, apparently. Abject. Abysmal. But I’m at AWP this week, a conference all about writing, and so, apology or not, abysmal or not, tired or not, write I must.

I am going to write about Anxiety. My plan for this year’s A-to-Z Challenge is thus: I want to spend this month writing about my experiences as a student in the Clinical Mental Health Counselor Program at Antioch University. I want to weave together a narrative, exploring the concepts (from A to Z) that I study as a student of mental health counseling and how my studies intersect with my life. How my coursework shows up in my day-to-day world.

I haven’t studied Anxiety, per se. I have taken many relevant classes, delved into the DSM 5 and learned how I might diagnose a client who presented with symptoms that fit the criteria for, say, Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). I learned to write a treatment plan and theorized about which therapeutic modality I might employ to best help my client regain his or her equilibrium.

Most of what I’ve learned about Anxiety comes from first hand experience. I am not one who has been plagued with Anxiety for much of my life. No, my familiarity with this particular demon has only been recent and is one of the reasons I started running regularly a little over two years ago.

I started waking up in the mornings with a pit of dread churning in my stomach and found that if I went for a run, somewhere around mile two or three, the pit of dread loosened and eventually abated. I guess the endorphins kicked in, the oxytocin released, and the runner’s euphoria lifted the anxiety. Cured, if only temporarily, I could get on with my day. The next morning, the anxiety would return, and I’d start over. Run. Rinse. Repeat.

A nice side benefit to running off all my anxiety was that I started to lose weight. I felt healthier. My blood pressure dropped, as did my cholesterol, and my pants size. But, I digress. I still woke up most mornings feeling like something horrible was about to happen. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the axe to fall, for the bottom to drop out, for . . . well, you get the picture.

Anxiety chased me into my running clothes and out of the house each morning. But the thing about being a graduate student in a counseling program is that these sort of disruptions don’t slip by unanalyzed. While one part of me succumbed to the anxiety, another part of my tapped my forefinger thoughtfully against my chin and asked, “How do you feel about this, Pam Sue?”

Some people have angels and demons sitting on their shoulders. I now have Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, or their modern day equivalents, Jack Cornfield and Tara Brach. I can have a panic attack and simultaneously know for certain that while what I am experiencing might feel real, it isn’t true.

It’s weird, living with this meta awareness. I had all sorts of anxiety about traveling to AWP this week–logistical stuff that I know I’m capable of handling but for whatever reason just kept spinning on: how am I going to get to Sea-Tac from Bellingham? To the airbnb from LAX? I can’t check in until 4 p.m., but I arrive at 9 in the morning. What would I do? These questions dogged me for weeks. I envisioned myself in dire circumstances, dragging my carryon around LA for hours, sad and alone and dazed. Yet, I simultaneously knew my fears were unfounded and not based in reality. I could make a shuttle reservation, find a friend to stay with in Seattle, even one who might take me to the airport. I just couldn’t see the logical steps in the midst of my anxiety.

Something similar happened when I realized how expensive it was going to be to eat and drink here in Los Angeles. The first day I spent way too much money on so-so food and paid $8 for a mediocre beer. So, I took myself to the grocery store, but instead of going shopping at the end of the day, when the conference was over, I went in the morning on my way to the conference and so had to schlep my groceries around the conference hall, from one panel discussion to another.

I was so anxious about not having drinking water back at the airbnb that night, I bought a six pack of bottled water and stuck it in my already heavy backpack. All the while I’m hearing Jack and Tara on my shoulders, telling me not to believe the anxiety, reassuring me that all will be well, that I will be fine, that there will be water at the conference. That the universe will provide. But, do I listen? No. I buy the water. And I vow to do better tomorrow.

New Year Haiku

Published on January 10, 2016January 10, 2016 by Pam7 Comments

Sitting, staring, contemplating, notebook in hand.

During the holidays I had the luxury of time, during which I was able to write some new haiku. I’m always amazed at how a few moments of contemplation can result in words, images, and phrases arriving and coalescing into something more, how an hour or two staring into space or at the sea creates the space in me to realize metaphors and make connections.

I want 2016 to include more of these moments, stolen away from the pressures of daily life. I want 2016 to be a year of more poetry.

This ache, unyielding,
Spreads through my bones. Malignant
Love, metastasized.

Pulled by your tides and
Seduced by your moon, I float
Free in your salt sea

Dreams of you send me
Beyond the curve of the earth
Spinning through night skies

Wash me, erode me–
Rough surf, relentless pounding.
Can’t swim in these waves

I hope you don’t mind,
Ersatz inspiration, you
Are my makeshift muse

I want to be as
relentless as the ocean
pursuing the shore

Anxious attacks me–
All soft syllables, she bites
With ferocity

We could be breathing
Side by side. Instead you chose
Only to exhale

There’s new light on the
horizon. Nighttime will slip
Away into dawn

Some days I forget–
Even deep scars fade with time.
Blood and tears both dry.

I googled your name.
A thousand not-yous filled my
Screen. Damned imposters.

We are all blind in
Our refusal to really
See one another

Choosing blindness won’t
Render you invisible.
My vision is clear

Uninsulated
This fear electrifies–my
Body, conduit

A is for Accountability (And Also April and Anxiety)

Published on April 1, 2015April 2, 2015 by Pam6 Comments

When I started running seriously about a year and a half ago, anxiety propelled me out of bed and into my running shoes every morning—that relentless pounding thrum that only abated after my endorphins released around mile three or so. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I didn’t lace up my sneakers every morning, but I certainly didn’t want to find out. Once I hit mile three, the agitated voices in my head calmed down, and I could go on with my day. Until the next morning when we (the voices and I) started again.

I’d met April sometime around Christmas 2013 and joined her and other members of Carol Frazey’s Fit School on occasional weekend runs. In mid-March April announced she was training to run the Vancouver BMO half marathon and needed someone to run with on her long run—11 miles. Up to that point, my longest run ever had been seven miles (and not easy ones, either), but I agreed to join her on her long run anyway. What’s the worst thing that could happen? I’d have to walk part of the way? I’d get in really good shape?

We made the 11 miles and struck up an alliance along the way. I don’t remember exactly what transpired next, but eventually April and I were meeting up three or four mornings a week to run and train together. We didn’t actually run together after that first 11 miles—we have wildly different paces and distance goals, but we held one another accountable.

And accountability is key. Knowing someone is waiting at the trailhead or in the parking lot at 7:30 or 8 a.m. is a good motivator. Even if I don’t feel like getting out of bed, let alone going for a run, I can’t leave April hanging, and I am confident that she won’t leave me out there to face the early morning hours alone either.

I’ve lost count of how many races we’ve done in the past year or how many laps we’ve traveled around Lake Padden or how many miles we’ve logged on South Bay trail (actually, not true–I could tell you exactly, but I won’t). But I haven’t lost sight of how important it is to have her there so I’ll get out of the car and run in the rain, the wind, even through the thunder and lightning (though I don’t recommend the latter).