The Absence of Alarm

Anger scares me. A lot. In fact, it terrifies me. It has for years. Thanks to my mom and my brother who both turned to anger when, and if, they showed an emotion. And it scared me.

Actually, to be honest, they didn’t show anger as much as they showed rage. Things would always get very yell-y and confrontational and on more than one occasion, things would get physical. And yes, I mean abuse.

For years whenever I would be around anger, whether my family or total strangers, I would automatically freeze and put myself on alert. I could be at the grocery store, at a restaurant, on the bus, it doesn’t matter if I hear that lilt that the voice makes when things are starting to get heated, my anger antenna has already zeroed in on the pending confrontation and as duly notified my fight-flight-freeze system.

Since I have had more than thirty years of practice with this radar, it has become very finely tuned. I could probably tell you things are getting heated between any two people even before they realize it.

In some ways, this sensitivity has been a blessing because it has kept me away, and relatively safe (most of the time) from my family and even some strangers when things are starting to get heated. Avoiding any conflict and some physical danger. It’s not 100% foolproof but it’s helped more times than I can count.

It has also been a curse because it has significantly contributed to my chronic anxiety and my vagus nerve dysfunction. That’s what being around angry, yelling people on a daily basis for almost thirty years does to a person.

The other downside is that it has made me terrified anger. Anyone’s anger, including my own. I’m pretty sure I do get angry but I couldn’t tell you for sure because I shut it down as fast as I can. Without fail. I may not be able to shut down my brother, or my mom (when she was here), or anyone else’s, but I can sure as hell make sure I shit down mine.

I’m glad that this means I don’t get enraged very easily (CRA is an exception to this because nothing induces rage in me like CRA does), but I digress.

I’m working on accepting my own anger, thanks to DBT. And as I learn what anger looks like, as opposed to rage, and even managing my reaction to it better, it has led to a surprising byproduct that I hadn’t expected.

My radar, while still on and checking things out, does not automatically switch to high alert the moment a hint of anger is detected. I have been on the bus a few times when someone got angry, with someone else, and for the first time in more than thirty years, I did not automatically freeze.

For a moment I was shocked. Was my radar broken? Had it finally reached its peak and couldn’t detect anymore? Maybe. I consciously scanned the environment and myself, looking for the telltale signs that I was freezing-the teeth grinding, the tense jaw muscles and shoulders, the flutter in my chest that I may need to evacuate the area at a moment’s notice, and yet things were mostly okay.

Muscles were tense but not the sharp tension I feel when someone angry is around. And the flutter in my chest was not there.

And then it hit me, was I okay that someone was angry? Was I actually not feeling a threat? At least not a personal threat. Was that possible?

The truth is, I didn’t believe it. As I got off the bus, I assumed that there was some other explanation I had not responded when someone in my vicinity had gotten angry. Maybe I was really tired. Maybe I was getting sick. Maybe I was having a super off day with my radar; something that had not ever happened even once before, in more than thirty years of surveillance and practice.

It couldn’t possibly be that I was “okay” with anger. Nope. That momentary flash I’d had, thinking maybe I was okay with it had to be a delusion. Had to be.

And then it happened again. I was out somewhere and someone in my vicinity got angry with another person and my body remained quiet. And then it happened again. And again. And again. And again.

More than several times now I had not gone into freeze mode, preparing myself for an impending threat when anger was around.

Maybe I was becoming okay with it. Maybe I was starting to be around someone who was angry (not with me), and I didn’t have to prepare myself. I didn’t have to protect myself.

Of course, when someone does become angry with me, my radar kicks in as fast as ever, and I’m working on being able to be around it without freezing or shutting down. But if anger is around, and not directed at me, or someone I’m with, I actually am okay with it.

It doesn’t set off my alarm bells. It doesn’t put my body in a state of extreme tension. It doesn’t set my mind to watch for the nearest exits. It doesn’t scare me. Not the way used to. And I’m starting to get used to it. It’s really nice to not be on constant alert and perpetually terrified because prior to this I encountered anger in a lot of places. Like a lot. It was everywhere. Seriously.

On buses and subways. In restaurants. At grocery stores and department stores. At the movies. On the street. Getting coffee. Just everywhere, someone was mad about something. And so I was constantly frozen. Waiting and watching.

It has been a pleasant experience so far, and I can only hope that when anger is directed at me I will learn to handle it and not shut down. For the first time in my life, I will not be living in constant fear. I highly recommend it.

Like Getting a Whole New Body

While discovering my body and making a somatic connection have been important pieces of my healing, the actual process of discovering my body has been remarkably hard and terrifying.

When I first heard of the somatic connection and the part that it plays in healing from trauma, I thought it was total bull crap. If there was any mind-body connection to be had I’m quite sure I already had it.

I have a body. Of course, I know it’s there. And of course, I feel it. Sort of. Don’t I?

Except I didn’t. Not really. Sure, if I really injured myself I was aware and could feel that my body had been injured in that one place. But day-to-day feelings and sensations? Actually, no, not really.

I have had many bruises and small injuries over the years that I actually don’t remember happening or feeling them as they occurred, and only discovered that there had been an injury because either I saw it, or someone pointed it out to me.

A couple of years ago I was asked where in my body I felt an emotional response and I couldn’t do it. I tried and tried and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t connect. And frankly, that surprised me. I didn’t have a connection with my body? How long has that been going on? And when did the disconnect even happen?

After I got over the surprise I started to think about it. And outside of my therapy appointments, I kept trying to connect and I still wasn’t doing it. Because I couldn’t do it I started to think that not having a connection was really that big of a deal. So I didn’t feel my body most of the time, so what? And maybe it had been a while since I had connected to my body, big deal. In what way is being able to feel your body a good thing anyway?

And then one day, after several tries, it happened, I connected. I was able to connect with an emotional response I was having physically. And it was scary. I started to cry from the fear. And almost immediately I tried to shut it down. With gentle encouragement, I continued. And I started to do the work.

I started connecting. At first, it was only with my therapist I could do it. And only with her guidance. I couldn’t do it at all without her help. And honestly, I didn’t want to. I may have started to be able to connect to my body a little better, with help, but I sure as hell wasn’t enjoying it.

It was so scary to physically feel things. I had been feeling my emotions all over the place in my head for years and I was sure that it couldn’t get any worse than that. And then came along the body sensations. And it did. It got much worse. Feeling things in my head and now my body made everything feel magnified.

It was hard. And I learned pretty quickly that I had spent more than 20 years suppressing my feelings, whether emotional or physical. I had avoided all of my feelings for a very long time. And now having them come up at me in every way made me seriously question why this body-mind connection was a good idea.

But I persevered…

I learned that my biggest and most destructive coping method to shut down things down and disconnect from my body was food. I would eat to suppress and avoid any feeling I had, emotionally and especially physically. And when my weight ballooned from bingeing for twenty years, I ate to avoid that too.

The reasons to disconnect from my body started piling on. Literally and figuratively.

The numbness that overeating provided kept me disconnected from my body with everything I ate. I learned several years ago that my overeating was suppressing things emotionally. Suppressing things on a physical level though, that was new to me.

And the further disconnected I got, the more disconnected I wanted to be, and without even realizing it.

Thanks to anxiety, my muscle memory had been placed into a perpetual state of tension for more than two decades. This only reinforced the disconnect between me and my body because feeling the body sensations of anxiety are terrifying and tiring. Credit goes to my body for still trying though.

And finally, dissociation, messing up my spatial awareness and depth perception, had left me mired so much in my thoughts and behaviours for 99.9% of the time that now, years and years later, I had no idea that I no longer felt my body, let alone have a connection to it.

I had practice upon practice upon practice upon practice of being completely disconnected from my body.

Finally discovering my body in the last couple of years has been an eye-opening process. I never thought it would take this long either. I thought I could make the connection again, feel my muscles, connect to the sensations and, whamo, things would be back in sync.

But, no. Not at all. Not even a little.

The connection does not happen in one day. Nor does it only take a treatment or two. It actually takes A LOT longer. For me anyway.

And I have to keep making the connection over and over and over again. I am getting much better at it. And when I am able to relax, I can actually feel that in my body too. Years of tension left my muscles so rigid that even now when they first are released and relaxed, it hurts. It feels like my muscles have been through a strenuous workout.

In some ways feeling my body has shown me that sometimes I take up more space than I thought, but mostly I’ve discovered that I take up less space than I thought. That was a hard experience to realize, that my body was smaller than my thoughts had made it out to be. I would have expected the opposite to be more upsetting but no.

Finally feeling my spatial awareness and having better depth perception taught me that I have been way off in my pathways. I realized that everywhere I went I was making room for all my thoughts and emotions and behaviours in addition to my body. I was counting my anxiety practically as a whole other person attached to me. Depression too. BPD too. And ED as well.

I was carrying myself as if I were five or more people. And as such, I had to make accommodation for all of us everywhere I went.

It’s hard to have to accommodate so much. And a pleasant byproduct of connecting with my body again is not having to account for everyone and everything inside me, everywhere I go.

It does feel weird. As if I have been given a whole new body. And maybe in a way I have. Because adjusting to what space I take up and feeling what my body experiences, from emotions to physical sensations is hard. Every day feels new. Every day seems to give me a new sensation to deal with, and it can be overwhelming at times. Who knew the body was capable of so much? Cuz I sure as hell didn’t.

As difficult as it has been I’m glad to finally be making the body connection. It feels like I’m finally finding me. I don’t know yet if there is an endpoint to this journey, where I won’t have to keep reminding myself of my body, and hopefully, some sensations will get easier to cope with as time goes on. Hopefully there will come a time where I won’t have to stop and think, am I connected to my body? It will just be there.

If you’re like me and have been disconnected from your body as well, due to trauma, and you are starting to make the body-mind connection, I offer these tips.

First, don’t expect the connection to come back overnight. It will most likely take time and practice. The disconnection took time, so will reconnecting. And this is okay. Trying and sometimes frustrating but you’ll get there.

Second, be prepared that it might feel really unusual and uncomfortable. Having your somatic connection come back online can be very disorienting. Almost like it’s a whole new body you’re having to deal with and accommodate. It is totally normal to feel this. Try to include trusted friends and/or your therapist in dealing with this “newfound” connection, and ask for support if the feelings become a little too overwhelming at first.

Third, be prepared that it might feel scary. Having your muscles learn new memories from being constantly tense and on guard, to being released and more relaxed can feel like you have lost your armour. This is because you have. And that can feel extremely vulnerable and terrifying.

Please don’t be discouraged when it does feel like having the armour is the “safer” option. For a time you may put the armour back on. This is okay. If it will help you get through the moment then do what you need to do. And next time, keep trying to reinstall your mind-body connection.

Fourth, try to remember that whatever you used to cope, whether destructive or disconnecting, was done in order for you to survive. You did what you needed to do in order to get through. Be kind to yourself and your body, you both deserve it.

And last, be patient. If you’re at all like me and have years of disconnection between you and your body, then having some patience, with yourself, with your body, and with the reconnection process can go a long way. It may take practice and repeated efforts that probably won’t be easy. I can tell you it is worth it, so try and be patient.

Walking

I have never really been a big fan of walking. As a kid, I would often go to the local mall with our neighbour and it wouldn’t take long for me to start whining that I was too tired to keep going.

My fitness level had never been one that could be described as “active”. Even playing as a kid I would use my mind more than my muscles. And I was okay with that.

Then several years ago my hubby wanted to start getting in better shape so he started by getting off the bus a few stops before ours and walking home. He did this every day for several months, and in the midst of this, I kept saying that this was something I thought I should do as well.

Except I never did. Every day I felt too tired to walk even an extra few bus stops to get home. I was frankly upset I had to walk from the regular bus stop to get home. If I thought I could get away with a closer bus stop to home I would have taken it. And every day I would vow that the next day I would start walking.

I don’t remember why I picked the day I finally did get off a few stops early and walk home but I did it. It was tough. It took me longer than I would have thought and I was so winded when I got home I had to rest for a while before I could even take my jacket and shoes off. That night my back was sore, my legs were sore and I felt as if I had run a marathon.

I’m pretty sure the next day I skipped the walk citing sore muscles but somehow I actually managed to keep doing it. And every day I would feel winded and tired and sore. Then one day I got to the intersection by my home and suddenly I felt like it came too fast. I felt like maybe I could walk a little further.

So I did. I started taking away bus stops to get home and within a couple of months, I had actually found myself completely missing that bus route altogether, and walking instead. And then I started taking away bus stops from my connecting bus route. And again within a few weeks, I was skipping that bus altogether too.

I started walking home from work. Every day. It took me about two hours but I actually looked forward to it. I would plug in my iPod and trek off home, no matter what time I got off work, whether it was raining or not, I would walk home.

And then I started walking everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Even if it took me a few hours to get somewhere, I would walk it. I loved walking.

I loved walking so much that I lost at least thirty pounds in just a couple of months and my doctor had to weigh me twice to make sure she got the number right. I had lost so much so fast from walking everywhere. And as great as the weight loss was it wasn’t why I loved walking.

I loved what it did for my mental and emotional health more than what it did for me physically. When I would start walking, no matter how frustrated and irritated and angry I might feel, by the time I reached my destination I would feel better. It helped me to decompress. My thoughts became clearer and I was able to process some pretty rough days.

I did push myself too far one day when I walked home on a 40-degree day with no hat or water and ended up with heatstroke. That walk was brutal. I almost got all the way home and suddenly my body just shut down. I nearly collapsed getting on the bus for the last few stops because I just couldn’t go further.

And brainiac here took a hot shower when I got home so let’s just say I learned the hard way not to walk too far on extremely hot days and not to forget carrying water again. Note to self and others, heatstroke is not fun. At all. Don’t let it happen if you can.

I don’t know why I stopped walking but one day I was walking everywhere and then I wasn’t. And before I knew it, walking became nothing more than a necessity to get from point A to point B unless a car or bus could do it for me.

I missed it at first. I missed what it did for me physically but I missed what it did for me mentally more. Unfortunately how much I missed it waned over time and I again became a non-walker.

Until this past winter, when I started walking again. Except this time I started out of necessity. My anxiety had been high no matter what I did, and it got so much worse when I took public transit. Taking the bus raised my anxiety so high that panic attacks became a regular occurrence and I would start to avoid having to go out.

Being in the middle of an icy winter didn’t help much. But I wanted to get out. I was feeling trapped and anxious and it was starting to get to me. So I decided to start going out by just going to the grocery store. It was far enough that I felt like I had gotten out and yet close enough that if my anxiety got too bad I could quickly get home.

It was only three bus stops away from my place but I would still have anxiety taking the bus, so I did the only thing I could, I walked. It took me five times as long to get to the grocery store than it took my husband (and most regular walkers) but I wanted to keep trying. I wanted to at least get some fresh air and out of my home and my head. I wanted to do something. And at least walking I felt like I had some forward momentum.

Buses can be stilted and slow-moving depending on the weather, traffic, and how many stops the bus makes. Walking I felt like I was making some progress. I was at least moving. Instead of stuck and trapped with dozens of other people.

The constant snow falls and freezing rain this winter made my efforts much harder but I persevered. Because the walking meant I could avoid the bus and if my anxiety reared it’s ugly head I wasn’t trapped in a place where I couldn’t freak out if I needed to. Outside, walking, I could freak out if I need to. Inside, on a bus, with lots of people, not so much.

Most days the walking helped my anxiety enough that getting to the grocery store was only hampered by the crappy weather. Which seemed to be thwarting me every chance it could. Thankfully spring is finally here, sort of. And the icy sidewalks are finally clear. And now my walking, while still slow at times, is getting better.

Supposedly walking is good for depression and anxiety, and I have to say, for me, that is very true. Walking helps me clear my head and sort through the chaos that swirls around me. It helps me ground myself and feel like maybe I can handle things. It gives me time and space to breathe. It gives me a chance to process and shake off the things that can be upsetting.

It by no means solves everything. I still get anxiety, even while walking if my thoughts are overwhelming enough. And some days I still feel low. But the walking does help. It really does. Even the days when I’m feeling low and tired I still try. I let myself walk slower if that’s what I need. And I stop and rest if that’s what I need too.

If walking is something you’re considering I highly recommend it. Even if the first few times you can only go for five minutes and you barely leave your own property, still do it. Still go. Still try. It really can help. If you are able to do it often enough the time and the distance will melt away before you know it. And even if you don’t go farther or stay out longer that’s okay. It feels nice to get out, and even nicer when you’re done.