It started at 4 am. My eldest daughter, Lyla, stumbled into our dark room and whimpered “mom, dad, I’m sorry. I tried to get it in the toilet, but I couldn’t make it and I puked all over the bathroom floor.” We were obviously not mad at her—I’m still impressed she didn’t get any in her hair—but also not thrilled to start our day like that.
A little bit of background: we were three hours from home at a friend’s cabin. Our friends are selling the place so we were all up there for one last hurrah and consequently to help them move a bunch of stuff across the street into their pole-barn. The bathroom had already been scrubbed, because yes, they’re the type of people who scrub a bathroom clean before selling it.
“Mom, dad, I’m sorry.” I got up to check the bathroom while my wife checked my daughter for remnants of dinner. I managed to find some bleach and paper towel that hadn’t yet been packed away. Fast-forward past the painful details of that clean-up. Lyla and I went to the couch for the rest of the night. She puked again every 25 minutes for the next four hours.
I am still holding onto myself physically and emotionally at this point. I’ve been told I do really well with throw-up—it’s a special kind of skill I guess.
After finishing up a few odd tasks and saying goodbye to the cabin, we piled into our shuttle-bus of a van to head home.
That’s when the real nightmare started.
Within the hour, the rest of my children started dropping like drunk college kids in a limbo-line. Four of them took turns expelling the contents of their stomachs. My warrior-wife held down her own long enough to hold another grocery bag to their chins.
It’s amazing how quickly my mind goes from “this is awful” to “I am awful.” From “I hate this” to “I hate myself.”
As I tried to remove myself from my body, I am brought back by the shrill demand for Goldfish from a precious child who will surely return them as orange mash only a few minutes later. Or the compulsive gag of another who was dry heaving for the fifth time while strapped to a car seat, I was brought back and forced to feel the things I didn’t want to feel. To feel the soreness in my muscles from moving furniture the day before—a soreness I only feel because of the sedentary nature of my average week. To feel the tiredness in my eyes from squinting down the highway for the last two hours. To feel the rub of my shoe against my heel that is planted firmly in order to keep the gas pedal where it belongs. To feel the weight of my self-doubt and condemnation.
Many of us carry around toxic ideas of ourselves, of our loved ones, or of the world. Whether we know it or not, we find ways to keep that voice quieted as much as possible because it hurts to feel inadequate, unlovable, defective, and rejected. If you’re like me, you probably have a whole set of tricks and strategies to manage all of the voices. Maybe you have gotten pretty good at it. But I bet you start to lose control again when life takes a turn that you weren’t prepared for. For me, when stress piles up, my walls start to crumble and the toxic sludge that they were holding back starts to flow in.
So often I try to escape and run from the messages that tell me I am not enough. This time, I was brought back into the moment. Into the place. Brought back to face and confront the voices. But this is not my first faceoff. I’ve worked on these parts of myself before. I’ve labored to dig up the roots of these feelings and replace the lies about myself with what I really believe to be true. This time I am able to remember that my worth is not dependent or conditional.
Where do your thoughts go when you’re thrown into a stressful situation? Toxic thoughts create a self-reinforcing dynamic. When you try to operate from a place of self-loathing, you are very ineffective in changing anything about your circumstance. So it gets worse. Then you feel even worse about yourself. And so on. Breaking out of the cycle requires certain tools. The kind of tools that we necessarily would have had to develop before becoming trapped.
What do you do when your self-talk turns dangerous and hateful? Where ever you are at on this journey, thanks for being on it. We need people like you who are willing to do the hard work of healing our shadowlands.
Until next time, be blessed.
Sam
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On the bright side, when you have four children, how often can you be 100% certain they aren't getting up to anything sneaky? Toss em a bottle of Pedialyte and take the night off.
That's a good point. It is five children now, but only four of them were puking. There not all quite to the point where they can puke without getting it down their shirts, or in a pile of my clean laundry, so that leaves us on standby most of the night. Soon though, It'll be like using the flu and a biological weapon to get a damn date with my wife.
Not exactly the best way to spend a night... sorry for all the ickiness!
Me? I stop, brace myself and start a private meditation moment. When I sense stress building, I just keep repeating the manta "I am in the here and now... I can get through this..." the words just keep repeating in my head, or under my breath.
Thank you. It definitely was not an enjoyable evening. But we got through and it could have been worse.
I like your mantra. Often that is the kind of grounding that I need, it just doesn't come easily to me. Thanks for stopping by!
Ugh, so sorry, @ssimkins9, and far too often I'm right there with you.
Like a few days ago, when I discovered that a little stray cat I had been feeding and trying to befriend had, indeed, crawled up under our barn and died.
And now, every time I take the goats out for the day, or put them back in their stall for the night, I am faced with the smell of my own failure. Ugh again.
But, whereas in years past I would have taken the opportunity to castigate myself and beat myself up emotionally, now when I catch myself in a negative thought spiral, I use Byron Katie' s Four Questions to get through it, which can be used to investigate any negative thought:
These simple questions and their proper use, which Katie refers to together as "The Work," have helped me to greatly reduce my stress level, and have led me to some profound insights.
Of course, I have to remember to use them, as it has not yet moved into the realm of habit, but when I do, relief is immediate and lasting.
I hope it helps you and others as well. You can access full instructions and further resources at her website, and she is featured in a number of YouTube videos, including this:
Great comment. Thanks for the rich resource. I have not heard of Byron Katie before, but I also refer to that kind of self-exploration as "the work." So that's something. haha. I like those questions a lot, and I totally know what you mean about it not yet becoming something that is habit. I have a mentor that said there are three stages of mastery: knowing what happened, knowing what is happening, and knowing what is going to happen. The more we practice and the healthier we become, the less often we have to look back at a situation that exploded and will be able to see if coming from a ways off.
You're welcome!
Smart mentor, and I totally agree. Being fully present goes a long way toward getting us there, but isn't easy in our world of distractions, so it's a process.
On my best days, I'm able to act as the observer and not get sucked into the drama. I'd love to say that that's my first instinct, but alas, not yet. But I am getting better. ;-)
Cheers to progress! And as we gain ground in our own lives, we can be there to help others along.
Indeed we can, and do.
Often the best teachers are those just a step or two ahead of us on the path, who can relate while guiding, and the guidance can sometimes work both ways. ;-)
I just love your stuff sam. You really bear your soul, and you're witty too. I should have you on my show sometime!
Thank you for the kind encouragement.
I'd love to. We should definitely make that happen.