Usually, my period is what throws my week for a loop. But since that was last week’s hassle, I started the week with an optimistic outlook. On Tuesday night I finished up my work, made a quick list of things I wanted to get to the next day, and went to bed with this all-too-smug feeling that I was finally on top of my game.
He fell asleep while waiting for the doctor and, oh my goodness, can we just talk about how unbelievably precious kids are when they’re sick and all snuggly? I shouldn’t enjoy this as much as I do because he’s sick, after all, but these snuggles are few and far between so I can’t help it.
My smugness was short-lived when my 4-year-old woke me up early the next morning announcing every parent’s nightmare — he didn’t feel well. You’d think after three (3!!!) colds in the last six weeks, I’d be used to this, but this one felt like it was going to be the one that made me crack and completely lose it.
The unexpected had happened and all my plans were going to need to change. Again. I will go on and on about the importance of white space in one’s schedule for the unexpected, but there will never be enough white space to avoid days when family and health have to take priority.
It seemed he had the usual cold symptoms of a runny nose, sore throat, fatigue and some coughing. I spent the morning getting him comfortable and making sure he was drinking water, while also looking at my plan for the week ahead and seeing what changes needed to be made. I began making a list on a sticky note of the emails to be sent and phone calls that needed to be made and a list of symptoms to tell the doctor.
When I grabbed my phone, I saw an unexpected work problem that needed my immediate attention. While my son ate breakfast, I ran to my office to take a look and figure out how to help. What looked like an easy fix at first turned into a long rabbit hole trying to figure out what happened and how to deal with it.
By 9 a.m., my brain was simultaneously fried and moving a mile a minute, it felt like.
Thoughts began racing through my head and picking up speed: “My son is sick, is it the big C-word? We have to call him out of school and call the doctors and get him tested. This work thing is happening, oh and my plan for the day is smashed, when am I going to get this stuff done I wanted to do? I have to tell our friends we were around the other day, hopefully they’ll understand but ugh, what if we got them sick? Again, what if it’s the big C-word and we spread it?! We’re part of the problem. What about the work thing? Was it my fault it’s messed up? This was done last month — will I even know how to fix it or remember the file well enough?”
If you know Anxiety, you know this sped up mental monolog all too well, I imagine.
That morning, I knew I was in for a wild ride and I went into Survival Mode. I feel like I’m very familiar with Survival Mode after living through 2020 and 2021 so far. It’s where the bare minimum gets done, and I have to continually remind myself that anything I accomplish on those days is good enough.
But first, I needed to work my way through an anxiety attack. It’s odd to write about it. I feel like I’m reliving it.
I got these thoughts out of my head before they replayed themselves in my head. I grabbed my sticky notes and wrote down the things that absolutely needed to get done, like calling the school and the doctor’s office. Everything else on my to-do list was temporarily suspended. At least for the time being.
I messaged my client letting her know I’d work on the file that day. I didn’t have any calls or appointments and luckily everything else didn’t have an immediate due date. I had a file due that day, but other than that, it was a light day workwise.
And then I went into the bedroom, woke up my husband to take over parenting mode so I could get under the covers with the heating pad, close my eyes and let the anxiety happen. With tear-filled eyes and a pounding head, I looked at him and said, “I need help.” This is one of the hardest things for me to say sometimes, but hearing it out loud and knowing it was absolutely true in that moment was an odd feeling of instant relief.
I used to work my way through my Anxiety. Past Emily would even use the anxiety to fuel me like caffeine or stimulants. It’s why deadlines are great for fantastic motivators for Hyperfocus to happen. But unlike deadlines that can be adjusted, external factors and things outside human control cause a different level of anxiety. Trying to work through this kind of anxiety in the past has led me to unhealthy coping mechanisms like numbing with alcohol, making impulsive decisions that require a lot of cleanup afterward, and knee-jerk reactions that have seriously messed up relationships in the past, not to mention burnout that I’m somehow always surprised by.
The guilt-ridden voice in my head was saying, “Lazy, you’re just being lazy, you’re trying to get out of all of it and sleep your way through life, you know it won’t help, you should be trying to do more for your son, you should be the one making all the calls, what kind of mom are you? And if you’re not going to be a good parent, you’re not even going to make the effort to at least do your work and get paid? Unproductive = Worthless.”
I can tell you in the moment, these thoughts felt like 100% true facts. They felt undeniable and no one could have talked me out of them at that moment. That’s anxiety talking, by the way.
Anxiety has a way of forcing you to relax, but not before putting you through the proverbial wringer first.
Because I can tell you that what I did next was probably the absolute best thing I could do.
I took a nap.
I fell asleep and I allowed myself to get the extra sleep I desperately needed after all the expectedness of that morning. I woke up from my nap with an incredible amount of gratitude for my husband and our schedule. Not only was I able to ask for help, but I was able to get it in the form of more sleep so I could function better throughout the rest of the day. I was grateful to my husband for making the calls needed and stepping up right away.
Silly me for thinking I had to do ALL THE THINGS. Again.
I was also grateful we have affordable healthcare thanks to my husband’s job so my son’s appointment was covered. Of course that set in motion my anger at the healthcare system in America, but that was a rant and soapbox for another day.
I also realized that even with my son’s sick day, I needed to work in some extra self-care to check in with myself to help keep tabs on my anxiety. Sleeping wasn’t the magic cure, but it did allow my body to relax and regulate my nervous system. It was a reset button for my brain too.
Another thing I did was check-in with myself throughout the day. I’ve been doing my journaling in Google Docs lately and actually created headers for that day’s entry of Morning Check In, Afternoon Check In, and Evening Check In.
When those racing thoughts came back, I’d grab my phone or open a tab on my laptop and just let them all out. Usually at the time, all these thoughts seem to hold equal weight and it’s a confusing feeling I know is my ADHD brain having trouble prioritizing or seeing the time to get it all done.
One thing I like about Check Ins is they help me see my thoughts as separate from me — a reminder I often need. My thoughts are just that: thoughts. They do not define me unless I allow them to.
Sometimes when the rush of thoughts gets to be too much, I find a focus to anchor them too. In this case, it was the health of my son. That was my No. 1 focus for the day. The Check Ins gave me a few minutes to make sure I was doing OK in order to be able to focus on making sure he was going to be OK. If my thoughts weren’t helping with that focus, I had to capture them somewhere I would be able to deal with at another time or I had to let them go.
I wish I could report that the rest of the day went better than expected. It didn’t. But I can report that creating a list of just the Survival Mode things that needed to get done, getting that extra sleep, and setting up those Check In points for myself helped a ton.
I was able to get my work done and finally suss out the unexpected work problem, which really was a doozy. The 4yo continued to get worse with a fever and throwing up in the car in the afternoon.
At first I thought to myself, “When it rains, it pours,” but then I realized that thinking like that probably made the whole situation seem much worse than it was in reality. I also didn’t want to try to ignore how stressful it all was. That wouldn’t be fair to gaslight myself like that.
So instead I took a matter-of-fact stance as a way to neutralize the thought.
My new go-to phrase for days like this is going to be, “When it rains, it rains.” There will be days like these. And on those days, plans will be dropped, priorities will shift, and challenges will seem to keep coming. Growth is being able to recognize anxiety and how it affects me. It’s a powerful thing to be able to come up with a tool like Check Ins on the fly as a way to self-sooth.
And it worked. I got through my day just fine and was able to take most of the next day off, as well. Of course I’m behind and expecting some miracle bout of Hyperfocus at some point soon where I’ll knock off chunks of my to-do list with ease.
The next day was considerably better. Our son was feeling better but also slept later than usual, which meant we got to sleep later as well. We all got the good night’s sleep we probably needed.
Now that it seems like the worst is over, I can look back and, even less than 48 hours later, I can see the tricks my anxiety played on me and how it warped my sense of reality.
At one point in my Check-Ins, I wrote “The world does not exist merely for the sole purpose of judging me.”
It was a reminder I needed at the moment I was running through the mental list of all the reasons I could be considered a bad mom. I wanted to pass on that message to anyone who may be struggling with something similar. Having a sick kid can bring out the worst and most judgmental inner critic. But I like to remember that the fact that I worry so much about being a bad mom means I’m probably not.
In the book “The Psychopath Test” by Jon Ronson is a fascinating look at psychology, including a test given to determine if people possess the traits most often associated with psychopaths. When I read through the list of traits, I got increasingly worried as I related to a few of them.
But Ronson writes in the book “If you worry you might be a psychopath then you aren't one.” In fact, the trait most shared by psychopaths according to these studies was the ability to not care or worry about possessing these traits.
I like to equate that with parenting in that if you worry you’re a bad parent, you aren’t one. The fact that you worry means you care SO MUCH, in fact. That voice of anxiety is really just me loving my son so much that I’m overwhelmed at how much I want to help him.
The same is true for my inner critic with my work. If I’m worried so much about the projects I’m working on, then it means I care about my clients and the work I do.
And even now when I can feel that to-do list calling for tomorrow, I’m glad I’ve started learning to reframe my thinking, like neutralizing the thoughts that make situations seem worse or acknowledging my anxiety for what it represents.
Lessons learned:
When it comes to the unexpected, anchor your focus to your values. In this case for me, it was the health of my son as well as making sure I could be fully present, which meant giving myself support mentally in the form of Check Ins throughout the day.
Know yourself. Knowing how anxiety plays out for me was the key to being able to prepare as much as possible.
Be with those you can easily go to and say, “I need help.” For those of us who worry it shows weakness, it in fact is one of the most powerful things we can do for our own self-advocacy and shows true strength.
Check in with yourself on extra stressful days. Not everyone has that person to really look them in the eyes and ask with full sincerity “How are you REALLY?” Be that person for yourself.
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