My friend sent me this Harry Potter clip in regards to her frustration with a man in her life, and I couldn’t help but giggle. I told her that we, like Hermione, definitely don’t seem to have problems with our emotional capacity. It is chock-full of all the feelings. And we laughed.
But the more I thought about the clip, the more I realized that I am actually more like Ron. Maybe not in my emotional capacity. But certainly in my capacity to handle stress.
WHAT DO I MEAN?
I mean that my capacity to function day to day and not feel overwhelmed at life is the size of a teaspoon. Hell, maybe even a half-teaspoon.
When I saw my therapist last week, I dutifully whined about my conclusion.
“I don’t understand why my capacity to handle stress is the size of a teaspoon.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I actually feel like the older I get, the more my capacity diminishes! I constantly feel overwhelmed, and this makes me feel helpless and defeated, which just feeds into my depression. The more depressed I get, the more overwhelmed I feel. It’s a vicious loop.” I half-whispered in desperation.
The crazy thing is that until the past couple of years, I’ve always been a high-functioning human being. I educated myself in high school and got myself into college. During undergrad, I slept 4-6 hours a night, competed in volleyball/cross-country (depending on the year), maintained leadership positions in a campus organization, worked on and off campus to pay for school, danced all night on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and somehow still managed to get straight A’s in two majors. My 20s were a continuation of crazy productivity with teaching, lesson planning, traveling, running, writing, building relationships, learning a new language, and being immersed in different types of culture shock depending on where I lived. When I returned to the States, I worked 3 jobs, danced professionally, went to school, got married, became an aunt, and started three separate careers.
I took pride in my time management, my drive, my self-motivation, my self-sufficiency, and my ability to focus and accomplish what I set my mind to.
I look back on that and wonder how on earth I did it all. I struggled some with anxiety. But I still functioned just fine.
I do remember moments of feeling overwhelmed, and multiple mentors would remind me that
1) I HAD to rest – intentionally and committedly – there were no excuses for not having the “time” to rest because I was too busy! and
2) My self, my energy, my capacity to produce was like a basket (one person even gave me a mini basket to carry around with me so I wouldn’t forget the lesson). Going, going, going and doing, doing, doing were all fine and good. But every time I was busy going somewhere or doing something or seeing someone, my basket became a little bit emptier of me and the energy I needed to go and do and be all those things. If I didn’t rest, my basket would become depleted and I would have nothing inside it with which I could experience all of life in its grandeur. More importantly, it would prevent me from helping and loving on others. If I was empty of energy, everything I strove for became futile, because in the paradoxical way life is, I had to force myself to rest and “do nothing” in order to continue doing something.
Needless to say, this was (is!) a never-ending lesson for me.
NOW
What happened to that wonderfully productive girl?
Well, she’s no longer productive. At least not like I used to be.
My ex always wanted me to go back to “the way I was before.” The “real” Rachel. But I think it’s impossible. Some changes are final. A shit-ton of trauma, physical and mental diagnoses that just snowballed and progressed, and a heartbreaking divorce will do that to a person.
Now, I try not to plan more than one thing in a day.
Now, I have to prepare and set aside 2-3 days of being able to do nothing but recuperate every time I clean heavily or push too hard at the gym or walk too much.
Now, I have to sleep 9-11 hours each night (and sometimes still take naps) in order to function.
Now, I have to be ok with canceling up to 50% of visits and activities because I physically just can’t do it.
WHAT OVERWHELMS ME
Now, it’s not even just the physical symptoms that overpower me. I feel overwhelmed at everything, all the time. It…immobilizes me as much as the physical symptoms I have from EDS.
“What exactly are you feeling overwhelmed at today?” my therapist asked gently.
“Well, take the past two weeks for example,” I said.
Then I started counting on my fingers.
One. “I had the worst UTI of my life for a week, where the pain was too intense for me to work or concentrate or visit or exercise or pretty much do anything. Then my best friend reminded me that we were supposed to go visit my grandpa up in northeast Georgia, which I had completely forgotten about. So we took a whirlwind trip for the weekend, and thankfully, by that time my antibiotics had started kicking in and I didn’t feel like someone was stabbing and twisting a serrated knife into my organs while I tried to interact with my best friend and my 84-year-old grandpa, whom I dearly love.
“I got home late on Saturday, and Sunday morning I realized that I had forgotten I had agreed to make up a visit with another friend (which I had already canceled, so I felt bad for cancelling again). I ended up spending the whole day with her and her husband, which was great, but I just literally got nothing “done” or accomplished that week, which just adds to my anxiety.”
I paused and took a breath, raising my fifth finger.
“On Sunday night, May 4th, my mom ended up in the ER with pancreatitis and duodenitis (inflammation of the duodenum, which is the first part of your small intestine). My mom was in extreme pain, and I had been so caught up in my stuff that I hadn’t realized how sick she had gotten. I felt like a terrible daughter! Of all people, I should be able to recognize when someone is in pain and trying to hide it!
Thankfully, the hospital decided not to admit her, and she came home to hopefully recuperate with a cocktail of medications. I spent the entire next morning getting her written medications from the pharmacy (since apparently everyone seemed to be stuck in the Middle Ages this particular day), and then I spent an hour and a half making a schedule for when my mom could safely and effectively take her 10 medications. Afterwards, I went to my friend’s house to make a homemade birthday cake and birthday dinner, only to find out my sister was in a car accident and had totaled her car. My sister and the little old lady who pulled out in front of her are ok, thank goodness.”
The therapist is furiously scribbling.
Tenth finger: “I find two more cockroaches in my room, one under my desk where I spend hours each day, and one in my beloved books on my bookshelf. These are the massive “palmetto bugs” or “water bugs” that southerners go around calling them for some reason. I don’t know whether they are better or worse than the smaller German roaches; all I know is that they look and behave like huge fucking cockroaches.
I wouldn’t say I have a phobia, but I am literally shaking, gagging, and dry heaving in response to seeing and killing these bugs. I can’t stay in my room because I truly can’t sleep out of fear that I will wake up with them crawling on me (this has happened a couple of times, including one getting stuck in my hair). Anyway, I then spent an hour and a half just taking my stepbrother’s TikTok fluffy cloud stuff off my ceiling, which was harrowing because I kept on waiting for the roaches to just cascade downward like a waterfall on me since it seemed like perfect nesting material for them (thankfully they didn’t). Standing on a small ladder thingy and pulling material down from above me wiped me out, and since I was hurting too much to start deep cleaning my room, I left it for the next day.”
Needless to say, I feel like such an idiot to be so affected by a stupid bug. It’s so bad that I don’t even feel an ounce of guilt when I squish them (just overwhelming disgust)…which is unusual because I normally save all the other bugs and take them outside to live (spiders, crickets, ladybugs, etc.).
I move on to another hand while retelling my week.
“On Tuesday, I removed everything from my room (which is the sum total of all I own as a divorced woman except for some boxes of books, which are staying with some friends). I dusted the walls and then I mopped them with bleach.
I used the Ortho Home Defense Insect Killer and I sprayed voluminously over every seam and corner and hole in the walls, over the baseboards, over and around the vents, and around and inside the windows. Then, on top of that, I sprayed powerful, commercial-grade roach killer around the vents, windows, doorway, and bed posts. I swept and mopped the floor, playing Tetris with the furniture I couldn’t move out of my bedroom. There is honest-to-God no surface that doesn’t have bleach and/or insect spray on it. The fumes got too much for me, and I was in a lot of pain at this point anyway, so I just left my room to percolate. I promised my mom and grandmother that I would put all my things back in my bedroom the next day, apologized for the mess, and went to spend the night with a friend. Again.”
In exasperation, I throw my hands up in a gesture of I-give-up-on-counting with my therapist.
“On Wednesday, I spent most of the day putting my things back in my bedroom. These too, have either been washed or sanitized. Not long into moving everything back in, I realized my left rib was slipping in and out of its place (EDS is SO ANNOYING), and I had to grit my teeth through the whole moving-back-in process. For the rest of the week, I was worthless productivity-wise because I was hurting too damn much, and constantly falling asleep. For sure, I definitely overextended my EDS body, and it took the rest of the week to recuperate.”
I finally end my story here with my therapist, whom I saw on Thursday. He smiles sympathetically and says, “Welcome to the trauma response.”
I rolled my eyes and snorted inelegantly.
“Rachel, you had four major events that happened during the week: your UTI, your mom’s pancreatitis, your sister’s car wreck, and a roach invasion which obviously is a huge trigger for you. Anyone would be stressed out with this! But on top of that, you also have a lifetime of trauma that has shaped your experiences and your beliefs and therefore your reactions to future stressors. It is OK to feel overwhelmed. It is a natural response. You aren’t doing anything wrong.”
In the past 4 days since I’ve talked with him…
I got rejected for a job I was really hoping to land (because during everything, I am still applying and interviewing for jobs);
I prepped and held a Mother’s Day party for my grandmother, mom, sister, and step-sister (which I loved every minute of but was exhausted afterwards from);
I lost my fucking mind when I found another roach in my room beside my bed (I don’t even know how this is possible, and apparently I killed myself and wasted so much time deep cleaning for no reason at all).
I laid out 16 roach baits just in my room and have been trying to sleep, unsuccessfully, with the lights on;
My little niece ended up in the ER with a serious heart issue and scared all of us to death.
Basically, I have a triple whammy:
Trauma + depression/anxiety/PTSD diagnoses + legitimate life stressors.
And I logically know this. But I feel so inept and unsuccessful because being so overwhelmed just paralyzes me. I guess too, I have this unrealistic expectation that if the overwhelming feelings went away, then I could be that productivity machine that I used to be.
I recognize we all have events and circumstances that are outside of our control. When it rains, it pours. But it’s all the other smaller, less important stuff that happens in between and as a result of them that really get to me. I take the major stuff in stride, but I feel less in control with the other stuff. This makes me feel like I am too overwhelmed to deal with them properly. My anxiety shoots through the roof over things that are often even good and wonderful things, like my Mother’s Day party and my visit to my grandpa’s. I feel smothered. Drowning. Like I can’t get enough air (I’m sure my rib subluxating had a part in that too).
The truth is, I write about my shit because I can. Because it helps me process things. But my shit is no bigger than anyone else’s! Everyone deals with stressors, and other people don’t seem to flip out and become paralyzed and unproductive like me. They have to keep going because they have spouses and children and jobs relying on them. I become overwhelmed just thinking about having a job and children on top of my current stressors, and I feel pessimistic and even despondent about my future.
I am less busy and arguably less stressed than I’ve ever been before because I don’t have a family and a home of my own anymore, I don’t have a job at the moment, and I have a ton of medication and therapy to help me cope. And yet, I still feel like I’m sinking.
All the time.
On Saturday, I spoke with a friend who is feeling equally overwhelmed and equally frustrated at her ability to cope with it. She has large stressors, but she feels overwhelmed at the “little” ones too, like not being able to stay on top of housecleaning. In a sadistic sort of way, I am so relieved that I am not the only one. I tend to compare myself to others, especially my sister, cousins, and friends, and I can only think, “What is wrong with me?” Why am I so broken? Which then leads me to dwell on my core belief that I am permanently damaged and therefore less. (My therapist is working with me on this).
WHAT CAN I DO TO FEEL LESS OVERWHELMED?
I promised my friend that I would write a blog this week on being overwhelmed and what to do about it. But to be honest, I still don’t know what to do about always feeling overwhelmed. The consensus among psychology websites like VerywellMind, Calm, Mental Health First Aid, National Institute for Mental Health, and WebMD (I recommend clicking on all these links for their resources and information) is that finding healthy coping mechanisms, practicing relaxation techniques, writing in a journal, talking with someone you trust, and making practical changes to your life are the answer.
Somehow…it just doesn’t seem enough. I feel like there is a bigger piece missing to feeling overwhelmed at all the little and the large things. Like there is something I still have yet to grasp.
Here is what I am pledging to do today (minus the sleep one because you know, cockroaches are taking over my world). I am going to write sticky notes to remind myself and put them on my walls. I have a feeling building something larger than a teaspoonful of capacity-to-handle-overwhelming-stress is like anything else and takes practice.
TODAY
1. Pause and take a deep breath (or two or three or for however long I need).
2. Tell myself that I have legitimate reasons for feeling the way that I do.
3. Remind myself not to compare myself with others (since this is never helpful).
4. If I am feeling panicky, use one of my grounding techniques like 5,4,3,2,1.
5. Make a “no” list. Identify things that I can say no to so that I can prioritize what is most important.
6. Focus on the things that I can control and let go of those that I can’t. That whole radical acceptance thing.
7. Break tasks into smaller chunks so that responsibilities are more manageable. Make lists. Set boundaries.
10. Imagine that I am a friend or another loved one. What would I say to them? Doubtless, it would be something compassionate. Show kindness to myself just like I would to a loved one.
