I Eat Saltine Crackers
I eat saltine crackers. I eat them when I feel anxious or worried. I can go through and entire package in one sitting. I started this coping practice when I was moving through my divorce – sometimes, they were the only food I could eat all day. These days, with all the world in a continual turmoil, I’ve found myself craving them again – and have started examining this coping mechanism I have for anxiety and all it’s facets over the past four months. I’m a lot better than I was seven years ago and I have a lot more tools at my disposal. I’m also a lot more calm overall and harbor a lot less negative self talk as a general life negotiation – but when things get challenging, anxiety rears it’s ever so familiar lovely head.
Anxiety. According to the National Institute of Health, 19% of adults in the US have an anxiety disorder. That’s almost 2 out of every 10 people. So often defined as something that stops you in your tracks, where you crawl into your bed and pull the covers up – but so often missed in other forms. I just learned about something termed ‘high functioning anxiety’ and whether it’s an actual term, or just something under the larger umbrella of anxiety disorders, it still rings true.
With this kind of anxiety, instead of holing up in a dark room, anxiety propels you forward – often to over-achieving and high achieving degrees and can seem as if the person is successful and calm. You show up early, always dressed for success, neat – and everyone knows you as ‘the person who gets things done.’ Plus, the social schedule is almost always filled with ‘important things to do’. People rely on us – and that inevitably fuels the flames and keeps us riding this until we crash…and burn. But we never let anyone see that.
This is what anxiety looks like to me.
I’m afraid to let people down. I’m afraid to let myself down. So I just KEEP GOING. I burn myself out by myself. I don’t take breaks because I feel guilty that I’m not working. I’m crazy organized, detail-oriented, active, helpful, I appear calm and collected, I’m passionate, I’m loyal…and these are not bad things to be – but it’s the self talk that goes on around them that’s really dangerous. Negative self talk sounds like: “you’re a bad person if you don’t hand that in on time; your colleagues will think you’re lazy if you ask for an extension; you have to plan every minute of every day or you won’t be able to get it all done; you must reach all of your goals or you’re a failure” – all of this gets really heavy. Really fast.
I’m better at managing all the negative self talk these days. However, in times like we’re living in now, it certainly has become harder. Especially because people don’t really ‘see’ this kind of anxiety, so they assume everything is fine and they don’t reach out to see how I’m doing. Which just leads me to believe that people don’t care about me and that I’m not enough – because if I were, people would reach out…so I must keep doing more….and…well…can you see where all this negative self talk goes? It’s AMAZING how FAST it gets there too. Especially choosing to strike it out on my own as an entrepreneur in the music business in 2020, it just feels like I cannot – I cannot – stop. Because there isn’t anyone else to do the work. Only me. And if I don’t do it, it won’t get done. And it absolutely all needs to get done. The website has to be updated, the emails have to be sent, the social media posts have to planned, the calls have to be placed, the booking has to be started, the planning has to be done, the videos have to edited, the sound has to be good, the recordings have to be, the chapters have to be written, the blogs have to be curated….yeah. It gets overwhelming. Fast. The really humbling part is that the negative stuff I think just is not true. Somewhere deep down inside I know it’s not true. I know people care about me. I know they’re dealing with their own things. I know I could call them and say I need help. And I’ve learned to do just that – even when I’m afraid of being judged. I know I don’t have to do it all. I know I can take a break and it will be ok.
I know I’m not alone. So, maybe this will help others who are finding themselves in this space. I also don’t have answers, but this is what I’ve found helps me.
I sing. I write. I force myself to take breaks. Taking a full 24 hours is just about impossible, but I have managed (yeah, see that – even in writing this it’s hard to take a break) to take half days off. Which helps a lot. Days where I give myself permission to do ‘nothing’ and that I’m not a bad person for doing nothing and that people won’t think less of me for doing nothing for some of my time. Which is actually really hard to do sometimes – even though I know it’s what I need. I try to meditate every day because it slows all this stuff down. I eat healthy foods and exercise as much as possible. I limit my consumption of caffeine and alcohol. I get regular sleep. I pet our cat. I read. A lot. I write. I talk to my husband. I try to take walks at least 3 times a week. I go for long drives in my car. I teach and try to help where I can. I practice gratitude. I reach out to friends to let them know how I’m doing – and to ask how they are. Because I’m not always fine. Not even a little – but I’m getting there. Day by day. I don’t know if I’ll ever really get there, but by at least moving through the struggle, I know I’m not resigned to being here in the same place with these heavy, debilitating feelings of anxiety weighing on me.
And strangely, I get more done. And I feel better about the things I do. And about myself. So, I remind myself of that whenever my brain decides to go on overdrive in the negative direction. The more I do this, the more positive thoughts, the more gratitude, the more calm I actually am and the more I can just sit with myself and allow space and time to simply pass without me needing to fill every second.
And if that fails, well, there’s always saltine crackers.
