I’ve recently learned a nifty method of temporarily relieving myself of the all-encompassing anxiety that usually riddles my waking life. In the before times — and by “before times,” I mean before therapy — I thought I was forever meant to live a life of constantly mulling over the stressors of the world that I have no control over.
Like what random people on the street think of me, and will I one day slip on an unseen banana peel in cartoonish fashion causing me to bust a hip, thus being unable to work, pay my bills and end up living in a cardboard box in my brother’s back yard?
I’m down to one therapy visit a month because I’ve used up my insurance-covered visits over the course of four months, so once a month is what I can swing. Honestly, I can barely swing that, but brain health is essential so I’m willing to accept even more debt in exchange for a brain doctor.
In anticipation of my lessened visits to my therapist’s office, she has given me some coping mechanisms to get by during my 30ish-day sojourn.
My brain is an evil yet brilliant thing. It conjures up stories and jokes and ideas and opinions. It thinks critically and often tries to understand the other side of arguments my heart deftly ignores. But my brain also tells me lies and untrue stories. She details how I am unworthy, stupid, and often wrong. My brain is a bit of a B sometimes.
That’s why I’ve created a terrarium with the magic of visualization.
The terrarium is a large thick-glassed bowl with a thin neck and a cork in the top. It is filled with trailing ivy, big bold day lily flowers, tall pea plants (there’s no rhyme or reason to this, I know), and the bottom is lined with the colourful pebbles you find in a fish tank.
My brain terrarium is a marvel; if only you could see it!
At the end of each day, I lay in bed and bring my terrarium to mind. I envision the thick cool glass, the brilliant green of the pea vines, and the shocking orange of the lilies. I then recall the stressors that burdened me throughout the day. One by one, I review these concerns and decide if I can deal with them on my own. Sometimes I can use the kind part of my brain to unload the burden of worry myself. But when it all seems too much for me alone to handle, I bundle the thought into a seed, pop the cork off my brain vessel and shove that shit in there.
There my anxiety triggers remain until I can deal with them in a safe and protected place.
My monthly therapy visits are a blood bath, let me tell you.
Of course, the danger of this method is not dealing with your harboured worries at all. Locking your troubles away and forgetting about them completely is not advised, my friends.
10/10 do not recommend.
However, if you have a means to safely talk and work out the bad thoughts at a later date, I highly endorse this method for the sake of your day-to-day mental health.
Before I began doing this, I’d get triggered over Facebook posts I disagreed with, rude comments on my articles, and that kid down the street who always gives me the stink eye when I’m walking my dog past his house. Fuck that kid.
Now I find myself breezing over these minor inconveniences and living my life. I’ve been socializing with friends more, no longer worried that I will say or do something I’d later regret. I’m trying new things and adventuring to unknown places on my own. I feel like I have more room for confidence in my life because my brain isn’t filled with the chaos of things that may or may not come.
Here are a few stressors I’m not actively worrying about at the moment because they are safely stored away in my brain terrarium:
Roe v. Wade
Now, don’t get me wrong here; this little Supreme Court decision has taken up an enormous part of my brain power as of late. I think of the pregnancy I terminated and how my life would have been incomparably different if I had not had that option.
The difference is now, with the level headed beauty of critical thinking on my side, I realize that no amount of comment thread arguing will solve this problem. Three months ago, I’d be obsessively scrolling through Google, finding all of the information that backed my stance, circle jerking my ego into oblivion while chanting, “I am right. I am right.” Until I was too parched and self-satisfied to go on.
After careful consideration of the topic, I still believe that I am right in my pro-choice/body autonomy opinion, just like the guy the down street knows in his heart of hearts that he’s right in his opinion that all babies must be born but also does not give a shit about their quality of life once that beautiful little soul sack is here.
The guy down the street and I could argue for hours on this topic. We’d both be utterly obstinate in our opinion — neither of us wavering from our viewpoint.
So what’s the point? Just to stroke my own ego while getting off to the melodic sound of my infuriated vocal cords?
Educating myself, writing a personal journal about my feelings on the subject and getting involved in women’s groups in my area is, for me, the most mentally healthy way of dealing with these horrifying developments. All while letting my American sisters to the south know I support them and will do what I can to strengthen the movement.
Dad
My dad has been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. It wasn’t a surprising development. We knew that something was going on with Dad months ago when he was rushed to the hospital with severe abdominal pains — after weeks/months of testing, the diagnosis is in.
I don’t write about my dad often as our relationship is a tenuous one. As the Katy Perry song goes (paraphrased), we’re hot, then we’re cold, we’re yes, then we’re no…Okay, weird comparison. My point is our father/daughter relationship has always been rocky.
We’re too different to be friends, yet our familial bond makes us remarkably similar people. Both stubborn oxen, we butt heads on many a topic. We’ve gone months without talking, sometimes only sending the occasional text on birthdays and Christmas to let the other know we are fulfilling our duty to one another.
Yet, now with this timeframe of 6 months hanging over our heads, things have changed.
My stubborn side says, well, we weren’t close anyway. And maybe if this were six months ago, before I began my mental health journey, I’d have left it at that. Perhaps I’d have put on that oh-so-familiar stone exterior and quietly agonized about losing my father for the rest of my life.
I don’t want to be that person anymore. So instead of endlessly worrying about what may or may not happen, I now understand that I can choose how this story ends.
The problems I’ve had with Dad over the years have been placed lovingly into my terrarium, which opens my heart up to spending the moments I can with him and making up for lost time.
Money
After losing our small business in 2019, we found ourselves in a lot of debt. It’s been a difficult road, with debt consolidation payback and many arduous months of meagre living.
Over the past three years, I’ve felt supremely sorry for myself, wishing I could give my kids more. Wishing I could live a life that wasn’t paycheck to paycheck.
I’m working full-time now at an event rental company, which means my writing career has taken a backseat. This, too, filled my head with worries. I worried that I’d become irrelevant. I worried that everything I’ve worked for over the past ten years would be lost. I worried that I was giving up my dream for an easy paycheck.
This stressor isn’t as cut and dry as the others I’ve mentioned. The anxiety of money burdens everyone, from those with savings accounts filled to the brim to those who don’t know how they will pay for their next increasingly high rent payment.
Some internet people say sustainable living is the only answer to the coming economic crisis.
“Raise your own meat, plant your own food,” they scream from the top of their influencer mountain.
I’ve been baking my bread, planting a garden, and buying in bulk for the past ten years, and it has yet to save me from the collapse.
What about those who can’t afford to “go in on a cow” or purchase an acreage to live sustainably or affix their roof with solar panels? It’s the same old story, the already affluent forget about those who aren’t living the same status quo as them.
The stressor of money is also the stressor of status.
I have a home, food and am privileged enough to enjoy garden bounty every summer. I can’t, however, afford to take a week off work to go home to visit my ailing father. I can’t afford to sign my kids up for all of the extravagant summer programs I see my neighbours signing their kids up for. I can’t afford to buy a camper to escape to the woods for a weekend with my family. Hell, I can’t afford the gas to escape anywhere.
This brings me back to my B of brain. She tells me that I am unworthy because I can’t afford to do the things that all the internet people tell me I should be doing. I’ve fucked up somewhere along the line, and now my lousy decision-making has landed me in this impossible situation.
Well, into the brain terrarium you go, negative thoughts.
(Have I mentioned how much I love my brain terrarium?)
Instead of worrying about everything I cannot afford for my family, I think about what we do have.
- Long, challenging hikes with my son in a coulee landscape leave my face red and winded and my blood pumping wildly.
- Lazy Sunday afternoons in the garden admiring the discount petunias while my kids tell me about their summertime adventures so far.
- A job I look forward to going to because I feel genuinely safe and accepted there, and that is a chance and extraordinary thing.
- A life that is far from perfect and is even a little scary sometimes when thoughts about the unknown future set in, but nevertheless is mine.
And a self-built brain terrarium that keeps the kernels of anxiety at bay until I grow the strength to deal with them one seed at a time.
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This post was previously published on Lindsay Rae Brown’s blog.
You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
Escape the Act Like a Man Box | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men | Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race | The First Myth of the Patriarchy: The Acorn on the Pillow |
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Photo credit: iStock