Anxiety-What if vs what is
It’s the middle of October which puts me in the mood for Autumn leaves, pumpkin spice and Halloween. When I was a child, Halloween was my favorite holiday next to Christmas. Back then, trick or treating seemed more innocuous than it does today. You dressed up, went to a kids party and spent time driving from house to house to collect candy. (We lived in the country. There were no subdivisions to walk through.) A party would be given at school and included a costume contest between cats and hobos. There were no zombies and if someone chose to be a vampire they were usually more friendly than scary.
These days, the displays set up in the big box stores are enough to make you jump out of your skin. I’ve often wondered what a small child must think as they walk in front of one of those motion censored terrors. The threat level from Halloween just like everything else has increased.
What Causes Anxiety?
There is so much noice, division and struggle with the twenty four hour news cycle, threat is the norm rather than the exception. Bombshell! the headline screams—“Troubled Waters,” “Deadly Accident” “Impossible Situation.” We are under a constant barrage of anxiety and fear.
I got an email this week reminding me that of all the things survivors of childhood trauma battle, fear and anxiety are the most powerful. Let me describe one such situation. Say a child grows up in a home with domestic violence. The child knows that if they go to school, their mother will have no protection. A gnawing dread sets in. What will they find when they get off the bus at the end of the day? Will Mama have bruises under her eyes again? Panic, terror, fear and worst of all, constant anxiety accompany the child wherever they go. They live in fear for their life and in fear for the life of the parent they love.
I grew up in a home where I was constantly afraid. Though domestic violence wasn’t a part of my story, violence and threat toward my brother and I from both parents was. It doesn’t matter what the particulars of your situation were, constant threat married with the powerlessness of a child breeds anxiety and fear in adulthood.
Dissociating, pushing through and plain old ignoring inner pain are all ways we cope in adulthood—but in the long run, those techniques will not stop anxiety. I’ve talked to survivors who ran businesses, raised kids and accomplished amazing things. They were able to ignore the quiet boil of dread for many decades, but eventually it catches up with all of us. Dread, anxiety and fear creep into the present and demanded attention. It’s like trying to hold a beach ball under water. You can do it for awhile, but eventually, it pops up.
What is Wrong With Me?
Survivors think there must be something wrong with them when in truth, anxiety and dread are a normal reaction to childhood trauma. Every little bump in the road of life feels like a tsunami about to take us under the waves. So what do we do? Are we forever condemned to live like this?
No! We are not! We must choose to change our frame of reference from “what if?” to living in “what is.” Sounds simple. It is not. But the main thing to remember is that it is possible. One small step at a time. My next few blogs are going to speak about the ways we can implement techniques for living in the present and quelling anxiety. We want to live beyond trauma and even more than that, we want to defy it and embrace joy.