I wasn’t stressed.
I would have told you that with my whole chest.
Actually…
Maybe not my whole chest.
I was probably monitoring that.
But seriously.
I wasn’t stressed.
I was doing all the things.
Drinking the water.
Doing the yoga.
Taking deep breaths.
Trying to get enough sleep.
Resting when I needed to rest.
I knew stress could make anxiety worse, so I was being very responsible about managing mine.
You shoulda seen me, I was managing the shit out of my stress.
There was just one tiny problem.
My body didn’t seem to get the memo.
There was still adrenaline.
There were still palpitations.
Still weird sensations that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Still moments where my body would suddenly do something that made my brain go:
What the hell was THAT?
And THAT …was something I couldn’t understand.
I was doing everything I was supposed to do.
I certainly wasn’t stressed.
So why did my body keep acting like I was?
It took me a very long time to realize something that seems almost comically obvious now.
I was spending an extraordinary amount of energy trying to make absolutely sure…
I didn’t feel stressed.
Turns out, that’s not quite the same thing as being calm.
LOOK AT ME. I’M CALM.
This was the part that made absolutely no sense to me.
I wasn’t running around screaming at everybody.
I was doing yoga.
Breathing exercises.
Drinking water.
Resting.
I was CALM, dammit.
So why was my heart still skipping?
Why was adrenaline still showing up?
Where did this dizziness even come from?
Why was my body still doing weird shit?
WHY ISN’T THIS WORKING?!
I’m calm.
It’s supposed to work.
LOOK AT ME. CALM.
Looking back…
I was basically aggressively relaxing.
And there is something inherently contradictory about demanding that your nervous system
CALM THE FUCK DOWN RIGHT NOW
while simultaneously insisting you’re totally relaxed.
I couldn’t see it then.
Because I thought calm was something I could do correctly.
Drink enough water.
Check.
Breathe correctly.
Check.
Do the yoga.
Check.
Get enough sleep.
Check.
Remove stress.
Check.
No palpitations?
…
Well, shit.
Apparently we aren’t done yet.
When Coping With Anxiety Turns Into Monitoring It
None of those things were the problem.
Yoga wasn’t causing my anxiety.
Water certainly wasn’t.
Breathing exercises weren’t secretly plotting against me.
Those things can be genuinely supportive.
The problem was the job I’d given them.
The yoga?
I wasn’t necessarily doing that because moving my body felt good.
I was doing yoga so the sensations would stop.
Measuring my breathing?
Well…
I wasn’t exactly sitting there appreciating the miracle of oxygen.
It was more like I was making sure I was breathing right.
And the water?
That wasn’t always because I was thirsty.
Maybe I was dehydrated.
Maybe that’s why I was dizzy.
Better drink some water.
Resting?
Maybe I was tired.
I probably hadn’t slept enough.
Maybe if I laid down for a while, I’d feel normal again.
Everything had a job.
Make me feel better.
And every single one came with a follow-up question:
Did it work?
How about now?
Still dizzy?
Heart okay?
Any adrenaline?
Do I feel weird?
Am I calm yet?
And if I still felt something…
Clearly, we had a problem.
So I’d try something else.
And then check again.
I thought I was taking care of my body.
But most of the time…
I wasn’t listening to my body.
I was supervising it.
Didn’t “Normal” Mean I Shouldn’t Feel Anything?
This was probably one of my biggest misunderstandings.
If I was okay…
I shouldn’t be dizzy.
If I was healthy and calm…
My heart shouldn’t palpitate.
If I wasn’t stressed…
Why was I feeling my adrenaline surge?
If nothing was wrong…
Why did I feel something?
That question got me more times than I can count.
Because the sensation itself became evidence that something wasn’t right.
And I wish someone had explained something to me much earlier:
Bodies feel things. And that is perfectly okay.
Sometimes uncomfortable things.
Sometimes downright bizarre things.
A nervous system can produce some pretty dramatic sensations.
Adrenaline doesn’t exactly enter the room quietly, more like it barges in banging pots and pans together.
And feeling something uncomfortable doesn’t automatically mean you’ve done something wrong, failed to manage your stress correctly, or need to immediately make the sensation disappear.
That was a completely different definition of normal than the one I had been using.
My definition was basically:
Normal = I don’t feel anything that scares me.
Which sounds reasonable…
Until you realize you’ve just given yourself the impossible job of making sure your body never does anything uncomfortable.
Good luck with that.
The Sensation Wasn’t Always the Biggest Problem
Here’s where things got interesting.
A palpitation could last a second.
My reaction to it?
Oh, we could get some mileage out of that sucker.
My heart would skip.
Then:
What was that?
Why did it do that?
Is it going to happen again?
Do I feel okay?
Am I dizzy?
Is my heart beating normally now?
And suddenly I’m paying very close attention to a body I desperately want to stop doing anything noticeable.
Which, as it turns out, makes you notice a whole lot more.
Then I’d feel something else.
Maybe a little adrenaline.
Well, obviously THAT needed investigating too.
And now the original sensation had become something much bigger.
Not because I imagined it.
The sensation was real.
But so was my fear of it.
And the more afraid I became of feeling something…
The more important it became to make sure I wasn’t feeling something.
Check.
Monitor.
Fix.
Check again.
Nope.
Still something there.
WHY ISN’T THIS WORKING?!
Round and round we went.
I Didn’t Think I Was Stressed
This is the part I really wish I’d understood.
When people, and by people, I pretty much mean the emergency room staff, suggested stress might be contributing to what I was experiencing, I would honestly look them in the eye and say:
“But I’m not stressed.”
And I meant it.
Because I had a very specific idea of what stress looked like.
Stress was being overwhelmed.
Crying.
Running around.
Having too much to do.
Dealing with some obvious crisis.
I didn’t necessarily recognize this as stress:
Constantly monitoring how I felt.
Trying to prevent another panic attack.
Wondering whether a sensation was going to come back.
Doing something specifically to make sure I stayed calm.
Checking whether it worked.
Getting scared when it didn’t.
Trying harder.
I thought I was managing stress.
I didn’t realize how much stress I was creating around the possibility of feeling stressed.
That’s a hell of a loophole.
Self-Care Can Still Have an Agenda
This changed the way I looked at a lot of the things I was doing to help myself.
Because there’s a difference between:
I’m going for a walk because moving my body supports me.
and:
I’m going for a walk because I need this adrenaline to stop.
There’s a difference between:
I’m going to sit quietly for a few minutes.
and:
I’m going to sit quietly until I feel normal again.
One supports you.
The other comes with a demand.
Make this stop.
And if it doesn’t?
Now the thing that was supposed to calm you can become more evidence that something is wrong.
I did the breathing.
Why isn’t it working?
I rested.
Why do I still feel weird?
I drank the damn water.
WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!
The water didn’t betray me.
I had just given it a job it was never qualified for.
Calm Isn’t the Absence of Sensation
I think this may have been the biggest shift for me.
For years, calm meant:
Nothing scary is happening in my body.
No adrenaline.
No dizziness.
Certainly no palpitations.
Absolutely no weird sensations.
Then I’m okay.
But that’s a pretty fragile kind of okay.
Because now my ability to feel safe depends on my body behaving exactly the way I want it to.
And bodies…
Well.
They’re bodies.
They get tired.
They get hungry.
Sometimes they react to hormones.
And to caffeine.
They get hot.
And cold.
They hurt.
Twitch.
Make noises.
They occasionally do something weird for reasons that may never become particularly interesting.
And yes, sometimes symptoms do need medical attention.
Learning not to fear every sensation isn’t the same thing as ignoring your health.
I had to learn that those weren’t my only two choices:
Monitor everything.
or
Ignore everything.
There is a whole lot of room between them.
Maybe Calm Wasn’t What I Thought It Was
Eventually, I had to stop making calm the test of whether I was okay.
That didn’t mean I stopped doing things that supported me.
I still drank the water.
I still moved my body.
I still rested.
I still took a breath.
But I slowly started questioning the assignment I’d been giving those things.
Was I doing this to support myself?
Or was I doing it because I was terrified of what might happen if I didn’t make the feeling go away?
That’s a very different question.
Because maybe the goal was never to become so spectacularly good at managing myself that I never felt adrenaline again.
Maybe success wasn’t:
No palpitations today!
Maybe I didn’t need to earn a gold medal in relaxation.
Maybe my body was allowed to be a body.
And maybe I was allowed to feel something uncomfortable without immediately turning it into a problem I had to solve.
That was harder than yoga.
Harder than drinking the water.
Harder than checking another box.
Because it required something I hadn’t been practicing very much.
Letting the sensation be there without immediately demanding that it leave.
Not because I liked it.
Definitely not because I wanted it.
And not because every physical symptom should automatically be dismissed as anxiety.
But because I was finally starting to understand:
Feeling uncomfortable and being unsafe are not always the same thing.
Sometimes my heart might pound.
Sometimes adrenaline might show up.
Sometimes my body might feel weird.
And maybe calm wasn’t making sure none of that ever happened.
Maybe calm was being able to say:
“Well… there you are.”
And continuing with my life anyway.
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