On Angst

I don’t know if angst is really the topic I should be considering right now given my current state of mind about my own life, but the word came up this week in conversations with my kids and now I am thinking about the concept of angst.

In the context of discussing the inner turmoil of a young Peter Parker, better know to the world as the super hero Spider Man, one of my kids asked me to define angst. While I knew it has similar roots to anxiety, I was pretty sure it was of a deep pull than anxiety. So I looked it up.

Angst is a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, and insecurity. Yes, it is anxiety, but it is paired with these other words that give it a little twist…like a feeling you just can’t shake. The first definition I read was that offered by Google….”a feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition or the state of the world in general.” In my own life, anxiety is often tied to a specific event or person. Angst is that all over apprehension and insecurity you just can’t quite get your finger on and that makes it much harder to find your way out of it.

Enter some interesting history of the word. Its use in the English language can be traced to the 19^th century and psychology (think Freud). That makes sense. The interesting part, at least to me, was that It had much more widespread use in general society in the 1940’s and 1950’s….when the world got a lot scarier with the atomic bomb now in play and the Cold War beginning. This is when the world was in crisis and quite scary, but most people couldn’t really DO anything about it. Enter angst. Deep anxiety about the world in general. Actually, sounds pretty reasonable.

I would argue that at this same time, we are faced with the new widespread information age with many homes starting to have television. Before this time, most people could worry about local events, but the world beyond that we were not getting anything in real time. News had a delay. Now all of a sudden, it is possible to have real time news in your home, but you still can’t DO anything about it. This is the breeding ground of angst.

Now fast forward another 60 or 70 years and it isn’t just when we go home and flip on the T.V. The news is in our very pockets. We can get real time updates on any political event anywhere in the world. Sure, some we can do something about, generally in a fairly slow way….send money to help in a crisis, vote for a different candidate, try to enact a policy change. Yet largely we are inundated with information we can’t DO anything about. On repeat. Every day. And then as it builds up, we don’t know why we feel anxious, our immediate lives and people are doing ok, but we have this deeper feeling of dread about everything.

This next part is hard. Is there anything we CAN do about this? Because living with a deeper feeling of dread is kind of poopy. I don’t think I have the answers. I would like the answers. Well, I have a couple things I have tried over the years that do help, but it probably isn’t the whole answer.

To start, I honestly believe this is where prayer comes in. We don’t have within our limited power the ability to fix every part of the world. We are called to pray for the world. This isn’t a last resort, this should be step one. And while we are there, we can pray for the peace that surpasses all understanding for our hearts and mind, too. We don’t have to live dread; we can give it to God.

My second one, is that I got a lot less angsty when I stopped following the news multiple times a day. I am not advocating burying one’s head in the sand here, but I don’t think we need a blow by blow of each crisis, especially in U.S. national level politics. Read a newspaper once a week and you will get the biggest take-a-way’s without the daily despair. Definitely limit news you get from social media as we all know the accuracy of that! When I was a child, a family we were close to did not have a T.V. The didn’t get the paper. They just didn’t want a daily influx of crud dumped on them. I never thought they were ill informed. And my guess, although I never asked, is that in the case of September 11^th they probably found out pretty quickly without even having access to media in their home. When trouble is big enough, word spreads fast. Don’t worry about missing something, if you need to know, you will.

That is really all I have for my own ways of avoiding angst in my own life. It isn’t much, but in a world where there is an onslaught of anxiety, apprehension, and insecurity, every little step helps.

I hope you enjoyed my thoughts about a little word with a big feeling!

Giving up to make it through

The last few weeks have had circumstances that individually would have made life challenging. But these were not nicely lining up and waiting their turn, no, these circumstances were all punching at once. One friend asked how I was doing and I replied with “slowly losing the will to survive.” It was dramatic, of course, but I just could not get above the hits. Because I struggle with chronic depression, I am very careful about becoming overwhelmed. I have a lot of built in stops and self-care to manage my mental health. I couldn’t even access a good number of those given the circumstances.

One thing that I know about myself is that my first reaction to struggle is to try harder. This is almost a part of my DNA. I was raised by people with this attitude and I was raised in a culture of this attitude. Not only do I try harder on whatever is going on, if that isn’t possible, I try harder in other areas to hope to compensate in the area where I feel stuck. My most recent example of this was actually during the last week. I was literally stuck at home (too much snow to leave) with a sick baby and two other kids and I was sick myself. So what did I do? I finished painting Isaac’s room. No joke. I figured that even if everything else fell apart, I would have one thing accomplished. Truthfully, it did feel good and it helped me later in the week to have that done. So I won’t say I shouldn’t have done it, but it does sound funny to say I did that in the midst of all that was going on.

Sometimes when I am in these places, though, I end up creating extra work or anxiety just to feel like I am “doing something”. Last week, I tried a different approach to see if it would help with anxiety and mental health. I gave up.

I came up with the idea when I was thinking about the military term “embrace the suck”. The idea there is that you can’t change your circumstances, so embrace them and get through them, rather than fighting against it as you go. I couldn’t change the snow. I couldn’t change my child being sick. I couldn’t change myself being sick. I couldn’t change being “on” all the time. I couldn’t change my husband being out of town. And, really, there wasn’t much to do.

Normally in that time I would find something to do, and I did in the painting, but that didn’t take long. So I would turn to “well I can read and study for work I have coming up”. But this time I didn’t do that. I decided to give up on it all and read a novel. Just lose myself in a book as much as I could. Let the kids watch TV and sit next to them and read.

I started to think maybe I needed to give up to make it through. I had a mental picture of Devil’s Snare from Harry Potter….that struggling could actually make it worse. That I just needed to relax everything to get out of this space. I stopped reading non-fiction and finished 3 books last week. I didn’t make a real planned dinner for over a week. And this season of circumstances is still not over, but I do feel like I am making it. I can do this. Our routine will reemerge in the coming weeks. All the tasks will get done. My kids will eat regular dinners again. I will get my work and study done. But for now I am going to go read a book.

Seasons of transition

I like to think of life in terms of seasons. I love the changing of the seasons in our physical world. I am not even sure I have a favorite season because I am ready for each one and embrace the change.

So I also think of my life in the same way...seasons that come and change and go and flow together and grow from each other. Some of them are seasons of excitement (hello, wedding), some are seasons of big change (hello, new baby), some are seasons of sadness (goodbye, dear friend), and some are highlighted by the transitions that they will bring to our lives.

I have been knowing this current season of transition was coming, at least a part of it, for the better part of two years. I knew that the end of November 2018 would mark a dramatic change in the life of one of my children, and by extension, my life as his mother would also have a large shift. I knew that it would not be a quick and easy process to get him through the transition. That my job as his advocate and voice would be exponentially larger through this season. To get him to and through the transition.

It is a season I have looked ahead to with both excitement and dread. Maybe because I knew it had a date associated with it even two years ago, I have had a lot of time to think about it and ask others who have gone through it and think of how it would play out. I knew it would be a hard season, even with the good that it could bring. There was no doubt in my mind that this end of 2018 would be mentally and emotionally taxing.

And now it is here and, to be totally honest with you, it has been harder than I even thought it would be. I have been trying to figure out why and I think I figured it out today. Because I only thought of that one aspect of life when I thought about this season and now I am here and there are SO MANY other things going on. Life doesn't happen in a vacuum.

See, my vision impaired toddler is going to be 3 years old this month. It has been a long and hard 3 years. Some days I am amazed we have made it here and he is mostly thriving. But age 3 signals a HUGE change in how kiddos like Peter are provided public support services . We will go from home based therapy to therapy based in the public school system. On his 3rd birthday, he will begin developmental preschool 4 days a week. He will be away from home for 3+ hours on those 4 days. That is a big deal for him at this age. For me, getting all the services lined up is a fight. It was a known fight and it has already had some big fights (and wins, so that is good, but still). It is making me tired.

I knew I would need to focus on this transition for these months. It is always on my mind. But so are the zillion other details of life with a family of 6. The baby had eye surgery last week! We are sharing our story in support of one of our therapy clinics on Saturday night...at a black tie affair with over 400 people in attendance. My husband has been in a state of transition with his job for the last few months. Life is so big right now.

In the midst of it all, I had some personal goals I wanted to achieve. Those who know what they are have been encouraging, but it has also made it almost feel like a bigger burden. And I am getting so tired.

So I forgot a key component to making it through a season of transition. I forgot that I need to give myself extra grace. That some things will slide. That I will have to unclench my fists and let go of a few things. That I can't do it all. That I have a high need for sleep that increases with stress. That I live my daily life with depression not super far behind and I need to be taking care of myself to keep it where it belongs.

I have cried a lot this week. That is a sure sign something isn't right. But it is getting better tonight. I remembered grace today. I talked to my people about how I feel. One of them encouraged me to remember the season. One of them reminded me that lists will help me. One of them brought me red roses.

I am remembering my season and that I need grace. I am smelling my flowers. And here is my list....

1. Remember grace
2. Get sleep
3. Do what I can for Peter
4. Let God do the rest for Peter
5. Set my other big projects aside for 2019
6. Exercise, meditation, and focused breathing every day
7. Embrace the chaos
8. Do one thing each day just for me...reading, writing, coffee, something

Above all, remember this is a season. It isn't forever. It will change like all those before and after. I will continue to grow and remember grace and hopefully look back on this season as one that birthed great new seasons to come.

Falling apart and what happens next

Many people tell me that they are amazed at my calm and humor and grace in the middle of life as the mom of the Bennett crew. And, because I am working on not having a self-depreciating attitude, I will say that they are right. I am good at generally keeping it together in what is a pretty high stress mothering environment.

That doesn’t mean I don’t fall apart sometimes. Sometimes I fall apart in a big big way. It would probably be a bad sign if I stopped falling apart because there are days life is seriously awful and if I wasn’t falling apart it would be because I had stopped feeling anything at all. So sometimes I do fall epically apart. Mostly in private because of my personality, but sometimes even in public I just lose it.

I had a such a day two weeks ago.  It had been a rough 24 hours with our oldest son. It was time to get to the bus and he wasn’t having it. His anxiety and disruptive behaviors were at a premium. It took the whole village that is my neighborhood to get him on the bus. I had no idea what I was going to do if he didn’t get on that bus. I was panicked. When the bus doors finally close, with him safely on board, I broke down in tears. My neighbors gave me hugs. I cried all the way (super late) to my double preschool drop offs. I cried through drop offs. I cried clear through the Starbucks drive thru window.

What happened next, though, is the important part. I stopped crying. I did my next things and while I did, I started to deconstruct the morning. I asked myself a lot of questions. What triggered the child? What made me feel the most upset? What could have changed? What couldn’t change? Where could I call in some resources? Who could help me? And with those questions I started to create an action plan. A plan of people to call, places to go, a plan of what I was going to do for my own spirit after it had been so totally stomped on that morning.

With those thoughts, the clouds in my head and my heart started to clear. My soul was coming back to where it should be. To be honest, the problem wasn’t solved. I had no clear answers or promises that this wouldn’t happen again. Getting the answers to my questions and getting a plan in place took a few days of hard work, and it took some not taking no for an answer.

All the while I still was doing my regular next things of parenting and life. The taking a deep breath, the thinking through the events, the analysis and refocus, those I would argue are the healthy result of falling apart. Now, it would have been easier to give up on that day. To go home and eat a bunch of junk comfort food and watch a movie or bury myself in a book. Those are the not healthy responses to falling apart, those responses take you from falling apart over one thing to a life falling apart and a depressed spirit, if I may be so bold as to say.

We don’t have to put on a wonder woman face to the world, we don’t have to have it 100% together, we can, and should, fall apart sometimes. Where we go from there, though, can have a huge impact on our souls. So, I will keep falling apart AND I will keep putting myself back together. Hopefully an even better version, a wiser and new lesson learned version, of myself.

My Happy Shoes

These are my Happy Shoes.

I got these shoes for Christmas...as in I saw them in the store and thought they were so perfect that I bought them and had Mark give them to me for Christmas.

I call these my Happy Shoes because they literally add to my happiness every time I wear them.

I wear my Happy Shoes when it is gray outside and I am happier.

I wear my Happy Shoes when I have to advocate for my special needs son...again...and they add some happy.

I wear my Happy Shoes when I need to drop off 3 boys for 3 schools and life feels crazy and I can look down and think "but at least I have Happy Shoes."

I wear my Happy Shoes on days when it is really hard to get out of bed. When I feel like I might cry all day. When I feel like it is hard to breath. When I just can't be me for one more day. Then I slip in to my Happy Shoes and somehow a tiny voice says "You can do this. Look at how cute your shoes are."

I need Happy Shoes because I struggle with depression. Sometime no matter what is going on, and sometimes because of what is going on, my brain just struggles. I haven't felt clinically depressed in about 5 years, but I struggle regularly with what I call my "pre depressed feeling", maybe "the blues" or "the duldrums", but I know when I am there that I need to take action. I need to act my way to a better place. This is actually fairly impossible for a person in a real state of depression, but where I am, in my "pre depression", I have a tool box of actions that can help me. And one of those tools is to wear my Happy Shoes. And so I do and so it helps my brain.

But why bring them up today?

Well, those "Happy Shoes" are by designer Kate Spade. It shook me to my core this week to know that the amazingly talented woman who made my Happy Shoes struggled so much that she couldn't see a way to keep going, so she didn't, she stopped living. I cried. Not because I knew her, but because without her making my Happy Shoes, I would have one less tool to fight against this demon. She helped me in my fight and she didn't even know. She was struggling in a fight. Did anyone know? Who else is struggling? Does anyone see? These are big questions. We have to start answering them.

I will continue to wear my Happy Shoes. They are a part of my tool box. I will wear them to help my own mind and I will wear them as a reminder to always be looking out for those around me who are struggling.