Defiance

Let me start off this blog post by saying that I am terrified. All of the time.

If you read my monthly updates then you'll know that I'm currently in the process of applying to college and opening an Etsy store. And that the prospect of doing either of those things is terrifying.

Objectively speaking, the applying to college part is easier because its less work. All I have to do is fill out my information, have my transcript sent to the college, and pick the program that I want to be enrolled in. But its still terrifying.

I have spent most of my life running away from things that scare me. When I made handmade valentines for my class in 5th grade, I was scared of how the other students would react, so I pretended to be sick and had my mom give them out instead. When I got put in the advanced class in 6th grade and was suddenly being challenged in school for the first time in my life, I wanted to leave the class. When I started having panic attacks and migraines and was made generally miserable by school in the following years, I left. When my teacher meetings for my online high school included other kids and one of them made a comment that embarrassed me, I begged my teacher to let me do one-on-one meetings. When I made another attempt at therapy in 2017 and started having panic attacks more frequently again, I stopped going. Every time I'm even slightly anxious, or upset, or inconvenienced, I start daydreaming to avoid the emotion. I could point to pretty much every single event in my life that frightened or scared me in some way and explain how I ran away (or tried to run away) from that situation.

I am very good at running away. Even if running away means doing things that, while well-intentioned, end up essentially ruining my life. I got as isolated as I've been the past few years by gradually withdrawing more and more into an ever shrinking safe bubble every time something happened that scared me or made me anxious. And it sucks.

The fight or flight response is ingrained into our brains. Its a survival technique that's been passed down for millennia. Except now, instead of protecting me from a wild animal, it tries to get me to give up on things and run away when they feel scary or overwhelming--regardless of whether there's an actual threat or not.

And I happen to be VERY good at the flight response (My fight response has also been getting triggered more and more frequently over the past 2 years or so, but that's a topic for another post). For some reason or another, probably the fact that I give into what the flight response tells me to do so often, my flight response is very active and its very good at getting me to do what it says I need to do in order to keep myself safe.

My point is that my life, up until very recently, has been consumed by a pattern of getting scared and running away, giving up on things that I want to and that are important to do, and retreating further into my shell.

When I started using acceptance and commitment therapy about a year ago, I started really recognizing this harmful pattern and the effect that it was having on my life. The whole point of acceptance and commitment therapy is to feel whatever it is you're feeling, and do what you want to anyways. I can't change my thoughts. I can't logic or will my way out of my anxiety. If I could, I would have been cured years ago. What I can do is change what I do with my hands and feet. I can change my response to the anxiety.

That's what I've been working on for months, and its something that I'll likely be working on for the rest of my life.

So how does this tie in to me feeling terrified all of the time?

I've made multiple attempts before to get my life back on track. To set goals and work hard to achieve them. And pretty much every time, I've felt scared and overwhelmed and uncertain, and I've given up those goals and retreated back into my shell.

Going to college and opening an Etsy store are both things that have been in the works for years. I put off doing both of them for a while, partially because I was scared and partially because I wasn't in the correct mental state to be able to handle something as stressful and as time consuming as that. Earlier this year I made the decision to really start working toward doing both of those things. I started writing down questions to ask an admissions counselor and brushing up on school subjects that I'm not the best at. I started building up a stock of crocheted items and doing things like finding the proper business licenses and all of that for my store.

Doing this is stressful. Beyond stressful. It takes all of my courage and then some to look at my to do list of items that need to get done to move me toward those goals and to actually do those things. It is a constant battle for me to not fall back into my usual pattern of cutting and running when things get stressful. Every single day, usually multiple times each day, I have to commit to my goals and take steps to achieve them, even when my anxiety and the flight response are screaming at me that I need to drop everything that I'm trying to do and never, ever try again because I'm going to fail and everyone will hate me and its better to just give up now.

And that is the center of it. Every step that I take, no matter how small, is an act of defiance against my anxiety and the habitual patterns that have kept me stuck for most of my entire life. Every time I tell a friend or a family member about my plans, I am defying the anxiety that tells me to keep quiet so that less people know if I fail. Every time I send off some other piece of paperwork or buy some more supplies, I am defying the anxiety that tells me that the further in I get, the harder it will be to cut and run, and the more costly it will be to do so.

I have already made it so much farther than I ever have before. I have spent months preparing for these things. Following my old patterns, I would have cut and run after a week. Maybe a month if I was lucky. But I've been seriously considering and working toward these goals for probably around 6 months now. And it has been an agonizing process and will likely get even more so in the coming months. But I have thought it through, which is more than I can say for most of my other decisions regarding stressful things. Generally, if I can't get the stressful thing completely done or out of my hands within, say, an hour, it just never happens. So I have already far exceeded my previous experiences.

Who knows? Maybe I will end up running away from the stress. Maybe it will be too much and I'll retreat back into my shell for a few years until the feelings become unbearable again and I have to do something about them. That would suck. But even if that does end up happening, I need to remember to be proud of myself for all that I accomplished anyways. I have accomplished so much over the past 6 months and that deserves all of the celebration in the world. Because I felt that terror. And I continually defied my anxiety and the old habitual patterns that kept me stuck and did what I really wanted to do anyways.

Love always,
Sam

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