We Are Never Stuck
How to exit without running away
In these past few weeks I am sure you have had moments where you felt cemented in the predicament we are all in as we inch closer to the dark tunnel ahead. I can relate. As much as I feel like I am through the worst part of my grief from the losses I have experienced over the last few years, there are moments that I wake up feeling very stuck. Moments that put me in fight or flight mode and all I want to do is run for the hills.
As much as I consider myself to be intuitive and emotionally aware, there are times I am struck by my own blind spots. One morning this week I was driving my son to school and commented on how unusually quiet he was being. He said, “Yeah, I’m sad.” I asked him what he was sad about. Once again he told me that he missed his brother and sister that moved away. Duh. How can I keep forgetting that this is always true for him? That his grief is just under the surface like a constant humming in the background. Like the noise of the refrigerator or of cars passing by outside the window. Going and going. Sadness is now the soundtrack to his life.
I always forget to separate us as we are so similar in nature. I in turn forget to separate our grief. His experience of this loss was very different from mine. When his siblings moved away, only to return for holidays and summers, it changed his world in ways he didn’t think were possible. For me it was obviously horrific, but I had lived life before them, before him, making it easier to imagine life after them as well. I was somewhat prepared as all parents know an empty nest is coming, that most often our kids move away, just not like this. My son had no idea that a big blow was coming. While I was busy fighting a long drawn out custody battle and saw the writing on the wall, he was busy being a kid trying to grow and develop.
After our conversation about his sadness, I dropped my son off at school with his enormous backpack. I then pushed the button that closed the door to the minivan which shut out the world and out of nowhere I started sobbing. There it was, good ole grief. It felt like running smack into a wall. There was no escaping it. I felt so guilty for all the damage I had done to this child’s life. All of my children actually. I was dripping with failure, which triggered the same feelings of not wanting to drive back home to try to be productive in a house full of memories that haunt me like ghosts.
I had been living in a life full of fear for a decade leading up to my kids permanently moving away. Not the kind of fear I hear other parents talk about like safety in schools, shielding our kids from the internet, or what will climate change mean for their future. The fear I had was more personal, closer than those fears lie. It was woven into the tapestry of my everyday life. It colored and distorted my parenting. It was looming in the hallways of our house. I feared email messages, approaching court dates, interviews with guardians, my son refusing to board planes.
By far my biggest fear was that I couldn't stop the plan my ex husband had put into motion. The one that resulted in my family falling off a cliff into a neverending freefall of grief. And as hard as I tried and as much as I fought, I could not protect my own children. Now, a year after making the hardest decision of my life, my son continues to suffer and there’s nothing I can do about it. It has happened. My worst fear realized.
This brings me back to the collective fear and grief that stands like a mountain before us. I am hearing a lot of people say that right now they feel stuck. People with dual citizenship are considering leaving the country, maybe just for the next four years. Maybe for good. The number of searches on Google about moving to Canada has risen over 5000%. It’s ok to want to run. It’s a natural response to want to escape our fears and what we feel are real threats ahead. But what if running isn’t an option? How do we not feel stuck?
In the actual moment we feel the fIght or flight response kicking in, there are techniques that can help us to calm down. HALT is a good one. Never get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. I add Cold to my HALT list because when I get too cold and my feet go numb, I seriously freak out. So for me it’s CHALT. There is also another great acronym I learned in a children’s workshop called Mindful MEDS. Which is to use Movement, Exhale, Drink, or Squat in times of stress to reduce the fight or flight response in the body.
I have used both of these methods for myself and my children in times of severe stress when running isn’t an option. Family court, mediation, airport transitions gone awry. But there is another method I consistently rely on when I know what I am about to walk into is a situation that is going to ignite a fight or flight response within me. It also comes in handy when I know my mindset isn’t well suited to the event I am required to face. Like when I am drowning in grief but still really need to show up to a parent teacher conference. It’s my “we are never stuck” method.
Here’s how it works. Picture yourself in a meeting where it is socially unacceptable to tell the other people in the room that you are having a very hard time being there. You are sitting in your chair, breathing in the stale air which might be a mixture of everyone’s different cologne and perfume. Which is not doing a good job of covering up this morning’s coffee breath or last night’s cocktails and garlic dinner. Or as my husband says, when the smells are like playing every note on the piano. You are watching time crawl by which is making you want to jump out of your skin. You feel uncomfortable just sitting in the conference room chair you are to remain in. You want to stand up and tell everyone this is bullshit and run out the door. But you know you can’t. Well you can, but you really don’t want to.
Maybe the meeting itself isn’t stressful but your life is chaotic. You know you can’t bring all your feelings to the workplace but you are also having a very hard time not letting it all spill out on the conference table when they ask you how your weekend was expecting “good” for an answer. You probably also can’t get on the ground and squat or start doing obvious breathing exercises when you start to feel your anxiety rise. This is when making a plan ahead to take little exits will help remind you that you are never stuck.
We take little exits all day long. If you don’t believe me, watch yourself as you move throughout your day. You will be shocked at how many times and in how many ways you (or your partner) do this. It might be looking at your phone (even when people are talking to you), reaching for a snack, drinking another cup of coffee, zoning out / daydreaming, going to do a chore instead of sitting down on the floor to play with your kids. Because exiting is a form of coping, it can needle its way into our lives and become a big part of our day without us even realizing it.
Exiting can take over our actions to the point where we are dissociating. But in very stressful situations, exiting can be a very good thing. Picture that meeting again, the one with time crawling by and your anxiety building but this time let’s think about your exit options. It’s just like locating where all the exits are in a room or a building in case of a fire. We are creating escape hatches.
My son’s unworn shoes sitting in the mudroom.
One idea is to not bring water or coffee with you. Instead scope out where the beverages are in the room. This can be your first exit. You can always get up to pour yourself some water, or if there isn’t any in the room, tell everyone you forgot your water bottle and go retrieve it back at your desk.
Just walking freely around the room or back down the hallway will signal to your body and mind that you are not stuck. In this moment of exiting, have a little dialogue with yourself. Go through all of the reasons you are choosing to go back in. Remind yourself that you can choose to walk away but you can also choose to stay.
Another obvious exit is to excuse yourself to go to the bathroom. Take an emergency phone call exit. You could pretend your child’s school is calling and you need to walk out for a minute to take the call. Or that you were waiting on an important callback and it will just be a minute. Walk somewhere out of site and try (C)HALT or MEDS to calm down until you are able to walk back and rejoin the meeting. In the end you might not even need to take the exits you planned but just acknowledging that they are available to you might get you through the difficult interaction ahead.
During my long custody battle, at one point I was court ordered to do co-parenting counseling with my ex-husband. Sitting in that room felt like the most excruciating fifty minutes of my life. Even more painful than sitting on the stand in a courtroom being cross examined. It was anything but therapeutic to be in therapy with my ex. He yelled at me. He lied. It was triggering just hearing his voice which brought up all kinds of memories from our eighteen years of marriage. Did I have to go? Well yes, if I wanted to continue to fight for custody of my children. Was I stuck? No. But it took effort to keep my butt planted in that chair. To show up. To not fall apart in front of him.
I used my “we are not stuck” method to create a way to walk through this co-parenting counseling without having a panic attack. I would take the best book I could find and show up 10 minutes early to read and get comfortable in the space. I would push the feelings of fear and anxiety out of my mind until the minute the therapist walked out to get me. Fear and anxiety would bubble to the surface and I would say, not now. I would tell myself there was no need to worry until the moment was upon me. Like a meditation of sorts. I would tell myself I would not give my ex more of my life, minutes even, than what was required of me for my children.
Then when the therapist came to get me, I would walk into his office and choose the seat that gave me the best view. I would look for interesting objects around the room that I could use to focus on instead of focusing on my ex. I didn’t make it obvious but I didn’t let myself get riled up at the sight of him. I was present and listening. but not his prisoner. He could not control my gaze or take all of my attention. I would stare at the fish tank and watch the beautiful fish swimming while he continued to bash my character. I would look at the different pieces of art on the walls and not the smirk on my ex’s face.
When I couldn't take the stress anymore I would get up, walk across the room and get myself a glass of water. While I filled that glass, I squatted down in front of the water cooler, breathing deep breaths while no one was watching me. I reminded myself why I was there. That this was for my kids. That sitting in the chair, participating, was the work. Then I would sit back down and drink that water slowly while my ex yelled some more.
The glass would empty and I would do it again. Moving freely around the room would remind me, I am not stuck in that seat, I can choose to stand up, I can choose to sit back down. I can choose to leave but I don’t want to. I want to stay and fight.
In these very dark times ahead, or maybe just the normal trials of life, there are going to be moments where running away seems like the safest and best option. You might think it will bring you peace to not stay to be bashed against the rocks. I really get it. I think about moving all the time. We still live in the house where we lived as a family of 5. The house feels creepily empty. My children’s clothes go unworn. Their shoes sit waiting neatly lined up in the mudroom. I could move. Moving might even be good for all of us. But moving might create more trauma for my son. So I could also stay. Either way I am not stuck.
There are all kinds of exits we can take intentionally from the horror and aftermath of what is taking place all over the world. We can take a break from the news and the relentless conversation of what is next. Yesterday I figured out how to remove the news feed from my phone, both in the search browser and the home screen swipe. This was both terrifying and liberating, like cutting a cord. We can also take a semi-permanent vacation from social media and instead stay in touch with people on a more personal level, getting involved in the community around us. We can lose ourselves in a walk, a book, a song, or just play a game of Sorry with our kids with our phones purposefully out of reach.
We will find ourselves exiting often involuntarily as we walk through the tunnel ahead because it’s all too much. We will take ourselves out of the present moment again and again and barely realize we are doing it. This involuntary action might creep into our lives until it becomes a habit we no longer feel like we are choosing. This can also make us feel stuck. It can keep us looping in our fear instead of planning how we are going to handle what happens next.
It’s absolutely ok to exit, in fact it is a critical coping skill. But it is important to remember that even in this we have choice. And if we surrender this choice we are also surrendering our strength and power. Because none of this horror is upon us. Not yet. Like me reading in the waiting room, the therapist hasn’t come out to get us yet. And when it does we will need to face what comes with all the energy and intention we can muster. We will not be able to exit out of habit when the fight is upon us.
Something I have thought about my entire life on this planet is that just the simple act of freedom of thought can remind us that there is a piece of each and every one of us that cannot be taken. When injustice is upon us, and all we see is abuse and oppression, when even moving about a room is not an option, it is then we have to dig even deeper and remind ourselves that no one can take our minds or our thoughts, our hearts or our will. In the dark days ahead, remember that we can exit out of fear or we can exit with intention so that we may stay and fight.
Stay strong. Lift dumbbells.