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I remember running through a park with my dad chasing after me, mad as a hornet. I think of that now in my counseling training in anxiety and trauma. You’ve heard of fight, flight, or freeze responses.
In that instance, I was fleeing.
Another time, we were at my uncle’s wedding, and I didn’t do something my dad wanted me to do. He was beside himself. He came at me, eyes bulging, red in the face, screaming some obscenity or another. I was 18 or 19. My response was different. It was full fight.
I got right up in his face and matched his cuss words and threats to harm me with threats of my own to call the police.
Freeze seems to be in the middle. Evidently, I am an all-or-nothing girl. I can fight or flee, but just sit there and take it? Not me.
I didn’t know then that I would one day want to be a counselor. I am the master at compartmentalizing emotions, for a while at least. But what goes in must come out. Combustion. The perfect fight response.
I haven’t been physically chased since I was nine, so I’m not sure what my response would be today. I never think about fleeing.
But I heard a podcast today on flight. Since I’m more of a fight kind of girl, I wasn’t even going to listen.
However, I am a counselor, and maybe it could help someone else. I read the caption.
It was definitely me.
Oh my gosh, it said something like my nervous system must stay busy, productive, so I can escape the feelings and emotions that once felt unsafe. Are they saying I’m leaning into work as a flight response? I literally never thought that.
How can working hard and being productive be wrong? Really?
This feels poignant right now because I can feel myself getting sucked into the same pattern. The past year has been stressful. What do I do? I get busy. I lean into work, activity, busyness.
If I’m having an issue with anything or anyone, I don’t like to dwell on it. Work is my socially acceptable escape.
Now I’m wondering what I’m hiding from.
When I sit with it, I realize I’m afraid.
It is hard to sit with fear, to reflect on what you fear without having an emotional response. And that emotional response is what makes us feel the anxiety or wreak havoc on our nervous system.
Unfortunately, all of this usually leaves me up at 2 a.m., not sleeping and writing to God. I guess I’m going to process it after all. The darkness and lack of sleep weaken me to a point where I can’t flee and just have to face it.
At least enough to get back to sleep.
Thank you, Lord, that you don’t sleep. I always need you, but I seem to need you more in the middle of the night. You are so faithful, and you are always there.
Then morning comes. It is light. I have a cup of coffee. I watch the sun rise. I feel hope again. Or so I thought.
I am ready to tackle the day, get busy, and be productive. I thought it was the light of day taking my fear away. Little did I know it was me avoiding it under the banner of productive work.
Sometimes my fears are just worry. Nothing has even happened yet, or at least the thing I most fear hasn’t. It seems like going ahead and getting stuff done isn’t such a bad intervention. That is until I finally stop. And at some point, I have to stop. If not, then I get the gift of burnout again.
God, I want a different path, please.
Wasting my time on meditation or other somatic interventions doesn’t work for this counselor. I can’t sit still that long.
But I have my own trick. I imagine the worst-case scenario. If the worst-case scenario happens, how bad is it really? If I can survive it, my anxiety diminishes.
Then I feel guilty about worrying. Jesus tells us specifically not to. But Lord, you made me Jewish at birth. Some things we are born with… just kidding.
Lord, am I being mean to you? You sacrificed your life for us. You promise to take care of us, but, you know, my worry might help me more. What even?
Okay, I need to get back to basics. I need to focus on Jesus. I can be upset about this person and how they are being toward me, I can worry about this other person, but in the end, I can’t change anyone. So I need to lean into my relationship with you, Lord. It is the only way things actually get better.
I know I can trust Jesus, and I feel His presence. He gives me clarity to deal with the actual stresses that are occurring. Then if my fears do actualize, I will be so much calmer. I might even control my fight response for once and stop the pendulum swing.
This process works for me.
But I don’t want to keep repeating the same unhealthy patterns, even if decades apart.
Why does it have to have a label? I don’t want to be seen as a flight risk or a fighter, for that matter. I just want to be at peace.
I have grown up from the nine-year-old girl who ran. I am turning around and facing the monster, I mean Dad.
