A few days ago, we were moving. Cue the collective sigh - moving, ugh. It's the worst. I arrived to the U-Haul bright eyed and bushy tailed at 10am.
"Renting until 4pm?"
"Yep."
Six hours. That should be plenty of time. Then 2pm rolls around. Things aren't looking so good. 3pm rolls around - we are not going to make the 4pm deadline. I'm scrambling for my phone amidst the moving boxes and packing tape. I find the app and extend the deadline. The app will only let me extend until 7pm. I pray that will be enough time.
We commence boxing and packing and moving. Hauling things off to the storage unit. We're sweaty and dehydrated. The storage unit is packed to the brim. We're stacking office chairs on top of boxes, and throwing in lamps wherever we can find space. It's a hot mess. I'm glancing at my clock every few minutes, trying to calculate how long until we need to get the U-Haul back.
It's going to take 20 minutes back to drop off the truck. And the time is ticking down. 6:30pm. 6:40pm. I have to leave. If I don't leave now, I'm going to be late. I tell my partner we have to leave now if we're going to make it in time. She's trying to pack in all the odds and ends. Finally, we lock up the storage unit at 6:45.
I'm going to be late.
I run to the truck and hop in. I want to race down the highway but I also don't want to die on my way to return a U-Haul truck. I am not a fast driver. Think Driving Miss Daisy instead of Fast and the Furious. But I'm going a solid 5 miles above the speed limit trying to get to my destination. My thoughts start drifting towards the U-Haul return.
The anxiety takes hold.
My stomach starts to clench. My breathing starts to get shallow. Then my thoughts start to get critical. I'm picturing their face as I return the truck, silently judging me as irresponsible. Thinking about my poor time management skills. Can't even return a truck on time. I've done this song and dance a million times. Anytime I'm running a few minutes late - my body and mind enter this vicious cycle.
I start to think about all the times in my life stress has driven me. I'm rushing to avoid being late. Trying to meet the next milestone as quickly as possible to earn more money. The stress hormones flood through my body and riot my mind. But it's not just me - it's all of us. Someone cuts us off in traffic and we seethe. What an asshole. We rush from one appointment to another, from one children's activity to the next. Constantly fantasize about the next job that will give us a pay boost. Life is a constant rush to the next thing. And the stress never goes down.
Our body and mind suffer. Our mind is a constant flutter of everything we need to do, and when. It becomes a place of chaos and confusion. Our body begins to break down. Chronic stomachaches, migraines, and pain. I'm tired of feeling stressed and anxious all the time. It's time to break the cycle.
And as I'm driving, something changes.
Strategy 1: Control your breathing
I notice my breathing - shallow and choppy. When we get anxious, our breathing gets shallow. It sends alarm messages to our brain. Something must be wrong. Our body starts to enter panic mode. Our mind starts running wild and our brain feels like it's on fire. Everything intensifies and we lose control of our emotions. Then we behave in ways that don't make sense. We yell, cuss. We flip off the car in front of us.
Just like our breathing can send signals to our brain to panic, it can send signals to calm. If you've been to therapy, you've been told to "breath." It might seem cliche but it's a great strategy. I have run several therapy groups for folks who want to get a better handle on their emotions. We teach more strategies than I can count. Everything from going outside without a sweatshirt in the middle of winter to counting backwards from 100 by 7s. After every group, people repeatedly state the most helpful strategy they learn is breathing.
Our breath is our one constant. No matter where we go. No matter what we do. Our breath is with us, and we can control it. When we slow our breathing, we send a signal to our brain that we are safe. Our body can calm down. Our mind can quiet. It slows down our responses and begins to kick on our rest and digest system - also known as the parasympathetic nervous system. It gets our thinking brain back online, and helps regulate our emotion brain.
So I start to slow my breathing. Normal breath in. Long breath out. I breath deeply and slowly, letting the breath start to fill my belly. My mind starts to slow.
Strategy 2: Consider the reality
When we struggle with anxiety, our mind churns. We think about disastrous scenarios on a loop. We get stuck on a mental hamster wheel. The more we think, the worse we feel. The worse we feel, the more we think. It's a vicious cycle that keeps us stuck. And when we're stuck in this cycle, we're focused on what could happen. We imagine wild and terrible scenarios, the most disastrous outcome that could exist. It's rooted in our emotion, not grounded in reality.
So as I race to return the truck, I let go of the dark fantasies. What's actually likely to happen if I return the truck a little late? There are no U-Haul police there to haul me off to poor time management jail. I giggle as I picture this scene. I start to run through the possible scenarios. The likely case is that I have to spend a little extra money on a late drop off. At worst, I may have to keep the truck overnight and pay for an extra day. Nothing terrible is going to happen if I return the truck a little late.
No one wants to spend extra money during a move, but it's not going to break me. It's likely to be an extra $100 at most, not thousands. When I get off the emotional hamster wheel, I recognize the reality isn't so bad. It's an inconvenience. A minor annoyance. It's not going to destroy my life. Even if the outcome had the potential to ruin my life, ruminating about it isn't going to change the reality. Worrying about an outcome doesn't change what will happen. It only increases our suffering.
Strategy 3: Recognize your internal stories
Much of the time, it's not the fear of the outcome that gets us bogged down in anxiety. It's the stories that we tell ourselves. I'm the youngest child in my family. I have two siblings that are ten years older than me. They got to experience their life lessons, and I was expected to learn from their mistakes. This was done out of love, but it felt stifling. Why couldn't I make my own mistakes when they were allowed to make theirs? And when I didn't listen, I looked immature and irresponsible.
I've built my whole life around combatting these narratives. I have a Ph.D. to prove it. I remember packing up my first apartment by myself. To prove my responsibility, I packed up every single item in the apartment in perfect order. There was nothing outside of a box. I ate off of paper plates and plastic silverware for a week. It was the easiest move of my life. But this level of perfectionism also drove me to developing massive anxiety and a chronic medical condition.
Being irresponsible is a pain point for me. It's like touching a bruise. So as I'm rushing to return the truck, these narratives start to enter my mind again. Just another example of how irresponsible I am. I should have known it would take longer. I should hustled more to make it in time. I imagine the U-Haul employees glaring at me when I enter the building. Silently judging me for my inability to better manage my time.
It takes a few moments for me to recognize returning a moving truck late doesn't mean anything about me. I'm not irresponsible. I don't have poor time management (most of the time). I earned a freaking doctorate. BUT even if I did mismanage my time, that doesn't make me a terrible person. Even if it was a tad irresponsible, that doesn't define me. I'm a regular person. Lots of people have to extend their rental time. I try to respect people's time and be conscientious. These stories I keep telling myself aren't true.
It's amazing how such a small event can trigger a cascade of overwhelming emotions.
It was just a trip to the U-Haul return, but it still sent me for a tailspin. My mind kicked into overdrive and the stress started to ramp up. As a psychologist, I see this all the time. We're running late to an appointment. We're looking at our monthly budget. Our boss makes an unreasonable demand of us. We get in a fight with our spouse. It starts with something small and it ramps up our emotions until we don't have control. We get stuck in survival mode. Our body and mind panic and we're helpless to stop it. These aren't events that need to control our lives, and yet - we let them.
So what do we do? The way I see it, we have two options. Option 1 - we let stress rule our life. We run from one appointment to the next constantly thinking about what could go wrong. We keep telling ourselves the tired old stories about how we're irresponsible or unloveable or a failure. We let this stress erode our bodies and minds until we're a ball of mental and physical anguish.
Option 2 - we learn to fight back. We recognize that the constant pressure in our chest and squiggles in our stomach aren't doing us any favors. We learn to control what we can. Focus on our breathing. Learn to quiet the mind. Consider the reality instead of letting our anxiety fantasies run wild. And we stop telling ourselves these damn stories about what a terrible person we are.
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