in my feels

Yesterday, I walked into “the guest room” – as I’ve done for many Sunday mornings, in preparation to spend an hour online with a group of guys who are walking a similar path towards recovery. These are guys I’ve come to really appreciate and respect, doing the hard stuff to move away from their unwanted behaviors and towards a healther way of living.

We pick a topic to discuss each meeting. Yesterday’s was going to be an interesting one, for sure. We couldn’t even decide exactly what to call it, but the working thought was something like sitting with and processing uncomfortable feelings.

As I walked into the room, however, something unexpected happened to me. The invisible weight of something unidentified hit me square in the chest. I immediately had trouble breathing. I started coughing, as though to clear my lungs. Asthma. Or at least the symptoms of asthma.

I’m learning that this scenario is my body’s advance warning system.

Something is off.

It was the part of me I call my protector taking over and coming to my aid. The instinctive and reflexive “fast brain” part of my mind that perceives when something is out of place and alerts my body to react before I have time for conscious thought. We all have this part. I’d guess not everyone would label theirs the protector. But for me, it was definitely my protector stepping up and wanting to take over!

But why??

There was nothing immediately perceptible as dangerous. Everything up to that point that I had done was usual and customary. I wanted to just move on, but then I also started experiencing a heavy-headed feeling, and noticed a ringing in my ears. Not only was my protector stepping up, but now I could feel myself moving toward dissociation. But I didn’t want that! I just wanted to meet with the guys! My chest is tightening a bit even as I write this.

Oh, and to keep the timing of this in perspective, all of it happened within seconds!

I proceeded with logging into the meeting portal, and went through the motions of being present. But honestly, I just wasn’t engaged. I sat through the entire meeting without contributing anything other than an initial quick introduction and “hello” to the rest of the guys.

I was literally sitting with and processing my uncomfortable feelings. Doing the work to identify what had rattled me about walking into the room, and why.

This was the room that my stepmom occupied for several years of her life. The room that became her hospital ward for the last year or so. The bedside where I sat, almost a year ago, in total silence except for occasional sobs, with tears running down my face – where I told her “thank you for being my mom. I know you did your best”. The bed where, only days later, she drew her last breath.

There was a teddy bear missing from where it had customarily sat atop the bed.

You have to understand, the house I’m living in is filled with craft projects made by my stepmom. So why had the instinctive “fast brain” part of me felt so on alert?? This particular bear was not just any craft project. This was the bear she crafted with care from my brother‘s robe that he wore for a long time as a kid, until he just grew out it it! And then it became my robe for a while. Because, yeah. I was the hand-me-down kid.

My protector was angry that my dad would dare remove that bear! It had history! But on a deeper level, it wasn’t even about the bear. Due to the configuration of the room changing even as slightly as a missing bear, my protector felt a sense of emotional violation – from the man who should have been my emotional protector as a child. I know now, on a cognitive level, my dad was not able to care for his own emotions much less mine, because he was never taught how. But the instinctive part of me, in my 50-something year old body, was linking something about that missing bear all the way back to feelings of being unsafe and insecure as a small child. And not just my own, but also my brother’s experiences and feelings as well.

I can write these things now, because I took time to process them. I literally sat there in my feels for the entire hour. I didn’t run from them. In a sense, I thanked my protector for making me aware that something was missing. But then I welcomed him to stand down and allow me to stay present and work through what he had, so spectacularly, alerted me about. After the meeting was over, I took time to journal and start to organize what had happened. And then, today, I presented a fairly jumbled version of this story to my therapist, and she helped me turn them into a more organized arrangement. I was hoping to continue with my EMDR work today, but this experience put me on a different trajectory. And it started with just enough mindfulness and self-awareness that I could stay within my window of tolerance and start making sense of what seemed, in the moment, so senseless. And you know, I’m pretty grateful for it!

Oh! And I found the teddy bear. My dad put it inside a chest that is right beside the bed. When I get up the courage, and feel I have appropriate non-accusatory language, I’ll ask him about his decision to remove it. I wonder what feelings it might bring up in him.