Anxious?...Me?

You can run but you cannot hide from yourself. I have been reading about relationships and attachment styles for years. I never could describe my attachment style, maybe because I didn’t want to admit it. I wanted to be a securely attached person, meaning that I had a healthy attachment to others. I wanted to believe that I could rise above what I used to be and be something else. Hmmmm where have I done this before? Oh yes, I remember, when I refused to believe that alcohol and drugs and loving alcoholics and drug addicts had had a profound impact on my life. That also worked out well for me.

So yesterday I was planning my day out and trying to connect with someone that I hadn’t seen in a bit. There was a misunderstanding about what that meet up would look like and when it would happen. I reacted badly. I took it very personal and felt rejected, unimportant and confused. I went down a rabbit hole of feeling like a fool, rejected, angry, not good enough, and like there was no hope for my relationships and I was doomed to be alone, partnerless, friendless, and familyless. It was a pretty extreme reaction and I was surprised by it.

I see a therapist and we recently talked through some of the losses I have endured in my life. Losses of relationship, friendship, mentorship are very upsetting. I have had my share and I haven’t always had time, energy or the safe space to process my feelings about it. Two years ago I had gone to a retreat with a counselor I had been seeing remotely for a few years. He lived in California but was coming here to do a retreat with clients that he saw remotely. It was a wonderful retreat and I had learned so much from it about feeling my feelings, letting my body process the energy inside and use or release it. I had learned to own my power to create my own life and I had felt a great sense of empowerment and also being held in safety while I explored painful truths and memories.

Two weeks later during my remote session with this counselor, he started talking about some pretty weird things and just didn’t seem right to me. He was talking about feeling like he was one with Jesus and that he could make things happen because he was directly connected to God. I felt very weird about it because we never talked about religion in sessions and he seemed to have a strange energy about it and strange look in his eyes. That week would prove to me that my perceptions were correct and he became mentally unwell. He started leaving me voicemails calling me names from the bible and telling me to join him in his kingdom. I didn’t know what to do. I could tell he was not okay, his clothing was dirty and his hair wild. He was sending me videos of him speaking in tongues and wandering the streets of California.

The person that I had trusted with my mental health and healing for the last three years was having a mental breakdown. It was almost beyond my comprehension. I felt care and concern for him because he had helped me so much over the last few years, but I could not help him because of distance and also because I had learned from him that I needed to protect myself from his unacceptable behavior. It was an extremely triggering event for me. I had trusted this person with my innermost sensitivities and traumas and he had used them against me when he became ill.

That felt like my marriage to Ryan. He knew my innermost weaknesses and sensitive spots and would use them to manipulate me so he could continue in his addiction. The person that I had attached my life to could no longer be trusted.

That felt like my relationship to my father. He was the one that was supposed to be my rock, my support, my most secure relationship, but he was unable to be that for me. As a child I did not trust that relationship and it continues to this day.

There are others, many other examples of this pattern in my life. I have a difficult time trusting and having healthy relationships with people, especially but not limited to men. The picture above names many of the things that can send me down a rabbit hole of all too familiar feelings of betrayal, loss, fear, ANXIETY, and doubt. My instinct is to then practice behaviors that feel like protection. I might lash out or yell. I might use guilt to manipulate you into doing what I want so the feeling of anxiety will go away. I may cut you off or close my heart to you. I may turn all of that inward and start to doubt my worth, to try to talk myself into accepting unacceptable behavior, try to attach to another person to prove that I am worthy of love.

I’m not going to lie, it was ugly yesterday. I was in a dark space. I practiced unhealthy behaviors in that relationship, I did silly things to distract myself, I ate too much, I spoke to myself very unkindly in my own head, and I was probably manipulative in my communication and judgemental. I did not feel good. And…I also did some things right. I did something physical that would benefit me, I cleaned my laundry room with fury. I made a list of things I needed to do to take care of me and the family and I did the ones I could. I let myself cry. I realized that my reaction was over the top and I let the person know that I knew that and was going to work through it. I talked with a trusted friend. I journaled. I gave myself space to process that this is all connected. That my perception that someone didn’t want to see me was connected to this character trait in me of anxious attachment. That any one of the scenarios in the picture above has the ability to knock me down the rabbit hole. It is my job to know that I do this and to let people in relationship with me know that I do this. Not in a shameful way because I cannot help the relationships I have had that created this in me. It was a learned behavior since birth. It isn’t anyone’s fault but it is my responsibility.

I always hope that my lived experiences and awarenesses can help others. My anxiousness tells me that no one cares and that it is ridiculous to share these things out in the world, but my deep knowing tells me that we are only as sick as our secrets. I don’t want to be sick and I don’t want others to suffer because they think they are alone. So I’m putting this out into the universe with the hope that one person reads it and feels less alone, anxious, crazy or hopeless. Be well.

Who Are You Letting Cut Your Trees?

Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing. - Lori Buchanan

July was a MONTH.

When I say I was being tested, I mean it. It was exam month and there were some very strange tests. One of the most revealing tests was the cutting of my trees. Not figuratively cutting my trees but the actual physical cutting of my trees in my yard.

I was floating in my pool on my unicorn float when I looked over and noticed that a whole branch of my favorite tree was cut off. I said out loud “What the hell happened to my tree?” My eight year old daughter replied “Oh yeah, the neighbor told daddy the other day that she trimmed our tree and was that okay?”

Was that okay? My brain exploded. I am an adult and I have the understanding that if you have a tree in your yard that hangs into another person’s yard, that they are allowed to trim it so that it doesn’t interfere with their mowing or if it is damaging their property. This was not that. A whole limb was missing that was completely on my property, facing my house. I love my trees and I love them to be as wild and natural as they need to be within reason. This is my weeping cherry tree that blooms with the most delicate pink blossoms in the spring and brings me joy and delight beyond words. Cut, naked, vulnerable now to disease and insects.

The next morning I get a message that the neighbor on the other side of me wants to cut the bottom branches of my pine tree and chop another tree in my yard down. My husband gave permission to cut the bottom limbs before asking me and I was upset. Like I said, I like my trees to be natural and wild. Pine trees don’t always have needles on their bottom branches but there is no need to cut them off. The other pine tree they wanted to cut down only has needles on it’s top 25 percent but it is still a living tree. I have no desire to cut it down. I was so distraught and upset that I just told them I had no desire to cut it down but if they felt they had to, go for it. I felt defeated and pushed but I did tell them that I at least appreciated the text since my other trees were just cut without my permission. They wrote back that they would wait on cutting the tree down for a bit. I cried.

I could not understand what the hell was happening. Never in my life had I ever looked at my neighbors landscaping, flowers or trees and decided that I could tell them what to do with it or just do what I wanted and tell them they were welcome that I took care of it for them.

The next day I left on a camping trip with my friend. We had 4 hours in the car to talk about life. I talked about my trees, about my recent experiences with relationships in my life and the tests I felt I was facing. It was becoming clear.

BOUNDARIES

My trees, my property. My decisions, my life. My beliefs, my business. My no, back off. My space, get out. Your opinion, not needed.

The people in my life were ignoring, plowing through, disregarding, and disrespecting my boundaries and me. The trees were the simplest form of this boundary violation but also the easiest for me to grasp. It is harder to see emotional, spiritual, and psychological violations, but they were all happening in my life in July.

Physical violations that I could see were adding up though. My friend and I did a lot of hiking and started to notice that many people just walked right into our space and expected us to move. The first few times we were like, “oh, sorry” and moved over. Then we started to look at each other and notice that we were not even being seen. That people were physically plowing into us, just like cutting down my trees. I started saying out loud “Stop cutting my trees!” whenever I felt violated. It became my boundary call.

One evening we were at a restaurant eating dinner. There was a group of obnoxious drunk men sitting together near the entrance/exit. They were loud, inappropriate, and condescending to the waitress. She played along, as waitresses often have to in that situation, but they were gross.

When we got up to leave they all started harassing me about my Michigan State shirt that I was wearing. Normally I would laugh and joke like the waitress had to but not tonight. I’d had enough. I did not smile, I did not joke and I did not stay silent. Instead I just kept saying loudly “I wear what I want!” until I was out of their heckling zone. Step one of reinforcing my boundaries and letting them be known and heard.

Step two would be letting my neighbor know that there would be no cutting of trees on my property without MY permission.

Step three would be cutting off a relationship that was causing me trauma, emotional upset, and harming me spiritually. The person that I had to cut off was very dear to me and someone I had trusted deeply. This person had been a trusted companion on my journey of self-love, healing trauma, and spiritual re-connection. This step would hurt in execution but be very damaging if not completed. This person became unsafe to me. It became a situation where words and actions didn’t add up, commitments were not kept, agreements were broken, boundaries were disregarded and spiritual connection was used as a weapon. This person’s behavior was erratic and disturbing and despite numerous attempts at me asking that it not be brought to me, they continued to drop it at my doorstep.

The worst kind of hurt is one where your vulnerabilities and trust are used against you in order for the other person to justify their behavior, manipulate you into doing what would be best for them, or to try to make you doubt your trust in yourself. A close second to that hurt is when they ask you to explain how they hurt you so that they can “understand what they are doing wrong”. If you don’t know that cutting someone else’s tree down is wrong, hearing me say it isn’t going to help you, just re-injure me. When someone spends a month telling you that what you are doing is hurting them and to stop and go away and you in fact do not stop or go away, you cannot be upset when that person does not want to sit down and chat with you about why they are hurt. It is like chopping, chopping, chopping the tree while it weeps-then sitting on its fallen branches with sawdust on your face and in your hair, asking the tree why it is weeping.

I do not tolerate this in my life. Not anymore. Not after this July. If you have been told by me repeatedly that what you are doing is hurting me and you are still wielding your ax, do not expect me to stand there and let you keep chopping anymore. Do not expect tearful begging for you to change or my understanding of your good intentions for trying to cut at me. Just know that boundaries are going up without explanation. That my yard, my life, my trees, my spirituality, my emotions, my needs and desires are my business and unless you have been invited into my yard, my life, spirituality, by ME, you will be met with a boundary.

Finally, I want to thank my neighbors and my relationships, and my Higher Power for this lesson. I hated it. I cried, a lot. I lost sleep, gained weight, and lost a friend. In the end, I know I will lose more. What I am gaining is maturity, self-love, health, and trust in a power greater than me to bring into my life the opportunities to do life differently. I have gained understanding of who I want in my yard, who is there because they just want to celebrate it for it’s wild, natural beauty, and who wants to come in with an ax behind their back trying to change it. My voice that stands up for me got a lot of exercise and is now louder, stronger, and more resolute. I’m hurting but I am grateful. I have never felt stronger, more clear, or more connected to myself and my God of my understanding.

I hope my sharing this helps you find your voice, your no, and your strength. If it upsets you or makes you start to question whether or not you will be welcome in my yard, save us both the trouble and check behind you for an ax before you even make the trip, because I won’t hesitate to check before letting you in.

Be Well.