Feels

My daughter might be having a tough time these days navigating school and friendships. She’s almost 10, a high-anxiety kid, and I worry about her. I worry about her so much it makes my chest ache. It’s worse because I have done it to her, either by genetics or influence. It keeps me from sleeping.

Last night, she got stuck on her homework and asked for help. It had to do with prime numbers and was sort of a trick question. While I googled the problem (have to these days with the way they teach Math … noooothing like how we learned it), I asked her to explain prime numbers to me. Which she did. Comprehensively.

The question itself, I asked her what she thought was the answer. She said “yes,” which was correct. But she couldn’t explain how she knew it. I ran through it as many ways as I knew how. She didn’t get it, but it wasn’t because she wasn’t getting it. She just didn’t know how to say it. She was tired, above all. She got frustrated. Started crying.

I told her to leave it blank, that that tells the teacher she might need to go through that part again. I told her to leave it blank because she didn’t need to be perfect. I begged her to leave it blank so she could go to sleep, because somehow we’d forgotten about the last homework problem in the whirling dance of dinner and evening decompression.

She would not. Leaving it blank would mean not following directions.

Breaking my heart, man. In those moments, it would be easy to get frustrated with her, not as easy to show compassion and understanding. Easy to make it worse. So many different ways to make it worse. I hope I handled it right.

We got it sorted this morning. I thought of another way of explaining it in the shower, she was calm enough eating breakfast that she could stop and think about it. She nailed it, which is always awesome to watch.

I am a person of big emotions. I wish that were not the case, but it is. I feel things like the edge of a blade, though the negative ones have much more punch than the positive, and take more energy to fend off. Sorry, to disengage from.

People have always called me angry. But I’m not, not really. I’m emphatic. All the things inside my head have giant emotions behind them, and if I express these things, they probably sound loud. If I rant, it’s angry. But have you ever heard me talk about something I like? It’s the same volume.

People remember the negative more than the positive because of how we’re wired. Has to do with the fight-or-flight systems from a time when it was about survival, not society. Those systems don’t work as well, create triggers and false-flags, when trying to thrive in our modern world. Anxiety as a thing has exacerbated as “society” progresses.

Of late, the feelings I grapple with most are those related to my job, my daughter and my wife. The former, I have to try to not have an emotional opinion about it at all. It does not, as my emotions would have me believe, dictate my worth or my level of life satisfaction. My daughter we’ve discussed. My wife, well, that’s between she and I, but even after 18 years, the emotions are evolved, but not lessened.

I am not afraid of my emotions, but I haven’t always known what to do with them. They used to crash over me, pummel me down. Still do when I don’t have my guard up. And at their worst, they tell me I don’t have any help, that I have to handle it myself. Alone. On my own.

Depression and anxiety, of which I admit to having both and much more of the latter, are thought amplifiers. They turn your feelings to 11. Anxiety sucks. It turns your brain into a unceasing blender. It steals your life, your time. And that sounds melodramatic, but its true. Time wasted with anxiety is time lost. (And yes, I realize that’s a judging thought, which you’re not supposed to do; easier said than done).

The last few days, last week and a half, maybe, have beaten me down. That means my head won’t shut off so I can sleep, which gives you fatigue, which makes it harder to dodge the anxiety. It’s a brutal cycle.

Four years ago, I would’ve been a wreck. I got help. I saw a guy. He taught me mental kung fu. And so today is better. Today, for whatever reason, it’s easier to stand aside and observe instead of getting in a mental scrum.

There’s that quote become cliche that says, basically, do not judge a person, you know not what they’re battling. It’s a truth.

Yesterday, you might not have known it to look at me, but I was a wreck. Today, I can breathe a bit. Who knows about tomorrow …

Hug your loved ones, gang. They might need it. Thanks for reading.

(Image stolen from Weird People via the book of Faces)