A couple selfies with masks and mouths capturing whatever reason it takes to get the tasks at hand taken care of.
I just want to start by apologizing to anyone I may have talked some mad sh!t to on a certain social media site during the past couple months of COVID-19. While I’m here, I’ll just go ahead and apologize for the next couple too.
Using you for my emotional release would be wrong if it hadn’t produced a positive outcome in the end, right?
It really turned out to help make a few of the many changes that came with the spread of a pandemic go faster along the way... so... thank you.
How did I go from one to the other so flawless, easy, and ready for anything?
I didn’t. Not at all. No. I did not. Hence the humble apology.
The important point I’m not gonna make you continue reading for, in case you’re in a hurry to get somewhere and need the booster now: spend some time with the forces you fight against. What is the signal that lets you know to object? If you turned the objection inward to yourself instead of outward, how would it change the dynamic of a challenge you face? By stepping into a safe space to examine our fight, freeze, and fear responses that we express outward and so openly on the internet, to ourselves (I imagine sitting across from a very cross, scared, or anxious version of myself, I actually took a selfie of the last time I was outraged and look to it for an example of a behavior I don’t want to get too comfortable (anymore) in my personality), over time, can open up the ability to gain deeper compassion and control in any given situation.
I remember taking this picture, thinking it might help prevent my face from sticking in a permanent grimace of displeasure.
A reminder that I can still get caught off guard in my emotions. The more space I give myself to express joy and pleasure helps alleviate Ms. Grimace over here.
Whether it’s OK, or not OK with anyone else, I can only process life as it comes, adjusting, realigning in present time.
Learning to shift my negative responses to changes that are out of my control isn’t always easy, I’m not always successful at it, and I know I’m a work in progress. It’s not impossible as I once thought, not as hard as it used to be either.
The thing I’ve added is to give myself a little more space that is safe to react in, to the unknown. COVID-19 was a big unknown and so it has flared up some old wounds.
Now in my, uhum, forties I guess I’ve learned it’s not that the traumas of my past go away, nor do the (sometimes creatively misguided) ways I learned to live through them. It’s that I can still both be painfully reminded of what was out of control then, and hopeful through ways I’ve learned to get control back that actually work.
In COVID-19, at the beginning of sheltering in place, I created a situation in an attempt to avoid the inevitable.
It still shocks me the things I can do trying to manipulate an imaginary outcome.
At this point, it’s to the extent that the universe sometimes helps me achieve the goal I’m struggling with.
Whatever it takes right?
Maybe it’s that I so want folks that are vehemently opposing mask wearing, sheltering in place, or any number of new developments bound to arise from COVID-19, to know that this is difficult for so many people and the actions being taken sometimes are part of our stress response stuck in freeze mode or especially for me fight mode, when maybe a little flee mode would be beneficial. Although not really possible other than through clearing space in our mind to process the onslaught of information, emotion, rapid fire change work for sure(more on this later).
Or, maybe it’s just that being told what to do goes easier for some than others. This is neither a compliment or dis to whether you have complied to the fullest extent to whatever recommendations, rules, requirements that come your way, or try to fight the powers that be at every turn.
When sheltering in place started my mom and I really thought we wouldn’t be affected much by it. Believe me, I have been drop to my knees thankful. In addition to being very fortunate, the specific thing we had been planning to do this spring and summer didn't involve being around any people. We were just heading out to where the wildflowers bloom.
All we needed was a car, some fresh baked bread for sandwiches, and it’s always nice to have park access.
First I lost the car keys, then I forgot in the pre-hoarding grocery shopping to get yeast, and then they closed the parks. Nothing like a pandemic to test the efforts involved in releasing outdated negative behaviors and just jump right into the wicked bliss of our stress response.
The only side effect losing my key brought up a nasty little negative feed-loop from the past I needed to confront and work through.
I lost my keys all the time when I was a kid. To the extent that I giggle at realizing I was a miserable latch-key kid. Really horrible at it. Those are some traumatic memories from my parents getting divorced, being an only child, wanting to be responsible, while being woefully unprepared.
It was stressful. And embarrassing. Losing my keys came crashing back memories of a change in my life I so didn’t want at the time that I had a hard time managing much of anything.
I see now how much I beat myself up about it. Who isn’t gonna be angry under such an attack?
That had to have been forty years ago by now.
Excuses to call myself “stupid” still manage to sneak in because that seems a stupid thought now. Right? Creating a scenario in which to lean into the behavior, I truly want to rewire.
So I lost the car key instead. Nowhere to go if you don’t have any way to get there.
I solved the problem.
The keys just disappeared into thin air. At the house. If ever there was a more clear message to stay home, this qualifies.
I was mad about it though. Not, in a throwing things around or punching walls way. More in a snapping curtly back in response to social media posts - demanding we all lock ourselves inside, NOW! NOW! This was the first week in March 2020 of COVID-19 coming to America. We’re a funny bunch, Americans.
Having an anchor to behave better for and towards ourselves and others helps in re-wiring outdated behaviors. An important lesson in this rehabilitation of sorts is kicking resentments ass. Ohhh, this is a biggie: Anger and fight can morph quite easily from the actual trigger to unresolved, outdated relationship dynamics.
“Ohhh, this is a biggie: Anger and fight can morph quite easily from the actual trigger to unresolved, outdated relationship dynamics.”
Knowing how to spot the behavior and emotions attached, especially if you want to update them for the better helped our situation smooth out to better cohabitate.
Just yesterday, my mom wanted to make dinner and whatever she made spilled into the oven. Something I can now see as unacceptable in her mind so when I looked up from my computer to a haze in the air and came into the room to investigate, she was pretty edgy and defensive until I said, “I’m fine with a dirty oven, I just want to air the house out a little bit” and relaxing, she went back to her cooking.
We are rocking this pandemic! Sure, I got a little touchy being told to stay home but it’s not forever.
That’s of course when the recommendation, turned wild debate, turned requirement in some situations, to wear a face mask in public arose.
Good thing I have masks! Not exactly for this reason but in case we’re out driving the back roads of Oregon looking for wildflowers and find wildfires instead.
Totally prepared to wear a facemask for a forest fire.
Totally forgot they were locked in the car… until recommendations to wear them in public started popping up.
Stress response ignite! FURIOUS ANGER GO!!!
By this point my car had been dragged off to the dealership to be re-keyed and the estimate can be best described with a brief toying with the idea of just buying a new car and leaving the keyless car for the dealership to deal with.
About this same time I started experiencing some oral pain. Of course, perfect timing. Everything seems to have gone into extreme shutdown and my response both outward and inward reflected it all too perfectly.
I had become the thing I feared most, a vulnerable population. This, after my first love, walking in nature, had been denied, and my second (and very guilty one for a conservationist) driving was now on hold, my mouth deciding to put me in a more vulnerable health state, beyond the health compromise of being American. Overall, turns out, we’re not the healthiest bunch.
That’s when the “put a mask on it” posts started.
The CDC has added mask wearing to their recommendations, but my state hadn’t followed suit immediately. Either that or I was in denial (I was probably in denial). Living well outside any hot zones had calmed a lot of my riled up fears. Fearing for my country, and many people suffering around the world from coronavirus is still (it’s May 2020 as I write this) vastly different than the actual effects in the community I now live.
Just note that as soon as I wrote “put a mask on” I also started with the excuses why I had not.
Am I selfish? Very.
Here are my excuses just to get them all out so they don’t pop-up again:
After following recommendations given from the onset, I was not amused that masks hadn’t been included from the get-go.
After sheltering in place for 2 months, I felt confident we didn’t have COVID-19 so therefore couldn’t give it to anybody.
This one takes the cake for misguided: Going to the grocery store was a nightmare from the start with the hoarding that took place, but watching people fail completely at wearing face masks and gloves should have made me want to wear on more not less.
Face mask wearing as the “it” accessory of coronavirus was too much for me.
And they were locked in my car! To quote a wickedly famous Oregonian, Today Harding, “It’s not my fault!” This is really the main reason I not only didn’t want to wear a face mask but did not respond well when social media posts demand I do so and NOW!
Maybe as a tasty side to my selfishness, I responded harshly to a post telling me if I didn’t wear one, I was choking someone out on a ventilator somewhere.
Usually, I can see these posts as personal expressions of frustration and let them be just that. It’s up there as top reasons to post on social media. An honor of sorts to the now late Jerry Stiller from the show Seinfeld, social media is a salute to the “airing of grievances” from the made-up holiday Festivus.
In the “feats of strength” category from the same holiday, my mouth encountered a kind of explosive response to being part of my angry head that required I call the dentist to check-on the status of a future appointment.
Her instruction was probably what I should have expected, to schedule an emergency appointment.
There are times in my life that either require me to question that which is Greater or beleive more wholeheartedly in something entwining possibility with reality because during this conversation with my dentist, my mechanic called that my car would actually have keys by the end of the day.
So not only could I go to the dentist, wait, this may come off sounding a bit strange if I couldn’t make it to a dental appointment where I live. I still go to the dentist in the city I used to live in, a few hours away. It is way less stressful than finding a new dentist.
“I’ll have our face masks!” I exclaimed when I got off the phone. That’s when I knew I hadn’t been arguing on social media in defense of not wearing a face mask. I had been arguing because I had them the whole time, just locked in my car.
“You’re so stupid!”
“Stop it, Sam!”
This negative, degrading self talk over the past, uhum, years has decreased in frequency but looking at it differently through this lens of safe, self exploration shows me that I have the ability to control outcomes negatively through these thoughts so why not start believing that I can have better outcomes with better thoughts?
It’s as if I hear a resounding cheer of applause from my dental work.
Realizing that even in the safest circumstances, our past fears can creep right in and make themselves comfortable to wreak havoc in our lives again.
Finding, learning, and putting to good use solid tools to gain better control over, not the emotion itself, but the deeper processing to come out beyond what presents itself as a trigger now. I know, I know! Trigger is another newish word in our vocabulary that is now everywhere and the reason why is our social media feeds. It’s important to know because it helps us do two important things. Walk away from the internet. Slowly, put the keyboard down and scroll away. Realize the negative feedback loop is real and living the life of its dreams in internet algorhythms.
So, the trick is:
Take some time, creating a safe space to explore the possibilities to “feel into” the parts of your personality you want to experience more of in your life. For me, it’s an ease and readiness for goodness.
Sense the opposite and unwanted behavior - for me it’s anger and my quick temper - invite it to face you in real time. When I got so mad at the mask wearing posts and I sat across from that anger - it was at myself for locking them in the car and losing the keys. Turned out to be a very old hurt, now a ghost once trapped could be set free.
Forgive. Forgive yourself and apologize. Forgive that past person, in my case a 7 year old, that was doing the best they could to navigate this crazy world and the crazy thoughts and feelings that come along with it.
Try it on. See if it fits. Ohhh… it’s kinda cute really. What do I have to go with my masks? I think I can build a couple cute outfits around this. No problem.
Cheers!
A reminder of the current, I’m going to call them requests, from the Oregon Health Authority - beginning of May 2020. Safety first isn’t one of my mottos for nothin’.