It has been about 5 weeks since I stopped shaving my underarms and I officially have hair. Not stubble. Not something that could be mistaken as laziness. Actual “oh ma Gawd. She has hairy armpits” armpits. Certainly I have not reached the point of full grow out, but my condition is unmistakable. A couple things about it have been surprising. One is that it doesn’t gross me out like I thought it might. As “going natural” would imply, it really does looks natural. Having fur where it never used to be occasionally catches me off guard, but I don’t look at it and wonder how someone managed to glue prop hair to my armpits while I slept.
The second surprise is that I DO feel more sweaty. I don’t often sweat. A lack of exercise and a moderate climate keep that in check. However, I now find that I periodically feel a little damp under there. It makes sense, so much so that I probably should have guessed it would be the case. The good news is that I DON’T stink. Odor was one of my chief concerns. But regular showering and good old Tom’s of Maine deodorant seem to be keeping me as fresh smelling as my regularly shorn self once was. Where did I get the idea that I would emit noxious fumes? I think it must come from the hippie patchouli set of my college days. It never occurred to me that I have been living amongst naturally hirsute males my whole life and not generally been offended. (The exception of course being after a sporting event. Dear God help us all.) I suppose it is just one of those things we tell each other and assume is true.
Even with all this good news, I’m not really a fan of the underarm hair. I’ll see it through, but after my cap sleeve incident the other day, I find that I am feeling too self-conscious to pull this off over the long term. Last week on a sunny warm day, I threw on one of my favorite summer shirts that has a pretty little shoe pattern and cap sleeves. I didn’t even think about the revealing nature of the top until I lifted my arm to reach. Oh the horror. Again, the hair did not look gross. I simply felt the full weight of possible stares and whispered comments. The oppression was painful. The punitive power of social stigma—what an effective tool to keep us all in line. Ugh. I am a slave to it in this way, I have to admit. I think it comes from having crappy, ill-fitting clothes as a child. I was nearly always out of fashion and I felt the “other-ing” effects of looking different. I still shudder at the thought of sticking out in that way.
When I lived in Eugene, Oregon, I rarely thought about my appearance. I dressed in homemade clothes, shaved my head, went bleach blonde for the first time, and stopped shaving my legs. I did it all for fun. To explore myself and my identity. I still got asked out on dates (by men and women); still had friends and was respected for my talents and gifts. The lines between “us” and “them” felt blurrier, more crossable, more crossed over. I enjoyed letting my freak flag fly without fear of social backlash. I’m only a hundred miles away, and yet I feel so different.
Who’d have thought all that from growing out armpit hair? This journey has been an excellent reminder that there are little bits of freedom all around us that we do not seize or even think to seize. Don’t know if I’ll have anything more to post about this topic in the future as I wait for my goal to be reached. If I have something worth saying I will, but I’m sure by now you are all wondering how I had this much to say about it at all. Thanks for listening and sharing your funny and interesting stories with me. It has been a lot of fun to learn about this widely accepted grooming habit and how it came to be. I have a new respect for the women who reject it, and who have the courage to break with conventions of all kinds so that they can live more fully as themselves. You are my new heros.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Tales From the Pits--Still Not Shaving
I’ve been surprised and had my need for immediate gratification disappointed by the slowness with which underarm grows! I think I’m getting about a millimeter a week. (No rulers were harmed in this estimation.) I’m struggling to come to terms with what that will mean for my summer. I assumed that, like my leg hair, my underarm hair would come in quickly and I would be shaving it off by swimsuit season. Au contraire. If I am going to stick to this little mission of mine—to see my armpit hair in all its glory, to know what I look like as a woman—then I’m going to have to manage through at least part of tank and bikini season.
This unexpected development got me to thinking about how far I’m willing or wanting to go with this armpit hair business. It is one thing to grow it out and not have anyone know—or see it, more accurately. It is another thing altogether to let the freak flag fly, as they say. To be open to staring and ridicule is not something I am generally comfortable with, at least not about my appearance. Believe it or not, after all my loud-mouthing about various issues on my blog, I don’t like to be looked at. I prefer to be in the corner or, better, under a rock when it’s a “see and be seen” situation. How am I going to feel strolling about in my summer tanktop with tufts of hair under my arms? I’ve determined to leave that decision for a later date.
Thus far, this little experiment/investigation of my natural self was not about making a stand or creating an issue. I have felt largely uncommitted to any idea of hairiness or hairlessness. As I said, I have leg hair, but no armpit hair (until now), plucked eyebrows and unplucked eyebrows depending on my mood. Then it happened. My oldest daughter told me she thought it was gross for women to not shave. Suddenly, this whole business became “about” something. I don’t want her to be disgusted by something so natural and mammalian as hair growth. The beginnings of hair in “strange places” was a sign of growing up that I looked forward to as a preteen. It meant that I was becoming a woman. I didn’t stop to ask myself why I was so excited to have it when I would just be shaving it off. I want my daughters to recognize that they have a choice and that there isn’t a right or wrong. Neither would they be more or less beautiful, at least not to me. So now I’m questioning whether or not I have an obligation to my girls to have armpit hair for awhile, simply to show them that they are not constrained by fashion or fear-based cultural conditioning. I’m going to have to think on that.
The upside of all of this fuzziness comes in two parts. The first is that I have been pleasantly surprised at how little my mate notices the hair. He really could care less. For me this goes to prove what other male friends of mine have said in the past, i.e. that men don’t care as much about those kinds of things as women do. And it’s true. Women, more so than men, are keeping women in check regarding the shaving rule. (This of course doesn’t count all of my awesome girlfriends who have been so supportive!)
The second is that I have been prompted to read more about the subject. One woman wrote that her parents didn’t allow her to shave because it was what separated the good girls from the prostitutes who, a hundred years ago, shaved to show that they didn’t have lice. So is that what we are doing by shaving, prostituting ourselves to the ideas we women have about desirability? Another question. No answers yet.
The only thing I know for sure is that this isn’t what I thought it would be when I set out to see myself au natural. The path that I’ve chosen here, however carelessly started, has become an opportunity to ask and answer questions that I never knew were there to be asked and answered. What fun.
P.S. Apparently I’m not the only one talking about this. See the link to an article in the NY Times this week.
This unexpected development got me to thinking about how far I’m willing or wanting to go with this armpit hair business. It is one thing to grow it out and not have anyone know—or see it, more accurately. It is another thing altogether to let the freak flag fly, as they say. To be open to staring and ridicule is not something I am generally comfortable with, at least not about my appearance. Believe it or not, after all my loud-mouthing about various issues on my blog, I don’t like to be looked at. I prefer to be in the corner or, better, under a rock when it’s a “see and be seen” situation. How am I going to feel strolling about in my summer tanktop with tufts of hair under my arms? I’ve determined to leave that decision for a later date.
Thus far, this little experiment/investigation of my natural self was not about making a stand or creating an issue. I have felt largely uncommitted to any idea of hairiness or hairlessness. As I said, I have leg hair, but no armpit hair (until now), plucked eyebrows and unplucked eyebrows depending on my mood. Then it happened. My oldest daughter told me she thought it was gross for women to not shave. Suddenly, this whole business became “about” something. I don’t want her to be disgusted by something so natural and mammalian as hair growth. The beginnings of hair in “strange places” was a sign of growing up that I looked forward to as a preteen. It meant that I was becoming a woman. I didn’t stop to ask myself why I was so excited to have it when I would just be shaving it off. I want my daughters to recognize that they have a choice and that there isn’t a right or wrong. Neither would they be more or less beautiful, at least not to me. So now I’m questioning whether or not I have an obligation to my girls to have armpit hair for awhile, simply to show them that they are not constrained by fashion or fear-based cultural conditioning. I’m going to have to think on that.
The upside of all of this fuzziness comes in two parts. The first is that I have been pleasantly surprised at how little my mate notices the hair. He really could care less. For me this goes to prove what other male friends of mine have said in the past, i.e. that men don’t care as much about those kinds of things as women do. And it’s true. Women, more so than men, are keeping women in check regarding the shaving rule. (This of course doesn’t count all of my awesome girlfriends who have been so supportive!)
The second is that I have been prompted to read more about the subject. One woman wrote that her parents didn’t allow her to shave because it was what separated the good girls from the prostitutes who, a hundred years ago, shaved to show that they didn’t have lice. So is that what we are doing by shaving, prostituting ourselves to the ideas we women have about desirability? Another question. No answers yet.
The only thing I know for sure is that this isn’t what I thought it would be when I set out to see myself au natural. The path that I’ve chosen here, however carelessly started, has become an opportunity to ask and answer questions that I never knew were there to be asked and answered. What fun.
P.S. Apparently I’m not the only one talking about this. See the link to an article in the NY Times this week.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Tales From the Pits
I know it seems strange and gross to some of you, but I’m growing out my underarm hair. It started with a Facebook discussion of Monique not shaving her legs. Now I’m all over that. Twelve or thirteen years ago I stopped shaving my legs for the fall, winter and spring because I didn’t see the point. I was living in Eugene, Oregon and unshaven legs weren’t stigmatizing so there was no disincentive to not shaving. I went for it and discovered A) what my leg hair looked like and B) that the hair was soft and not at all freaky looking.
I began dating my husband Steve in the summer, so you know, shaved legs. When the autumn was upon us I gently broke it to him on a road trip. I don’t shave my legs in the cold months. At first he was shocked and I think a little scared. So I said, “Fine. I’ll shave my legs for you if you shave yours for me.” Of course he wasn’t going to shave his legs. He’s a man! Within minutes he saw my perspective and said he’d be open. Much to his surprise, he didn’t mind at all. Now he describes my winter legs as silky and genuinely doesn’t even notice when I start shaving my legs again in the summer.
So back to the armpitd. When the women involved in the Facebook discussion talked about underarm hair I caught myself having the thought, I don’t even know what my underarm hair looks like. Then I felt strangely perturbed. In admitting that I didn’t know what it looked like, I admitted that I had, through cultural coercion, denied my natural self to such a degree that I was content—until that moment—to spend my entire life not knowing what my God-given self looked like. That just seemed wrong.
I made the decision to let my underarm hair grow in. When I told Steve of my plan, he smiled. “I can see why you would want to, but I don’t think you’ll make it. I think you’ll shave it before it’s grown out.” That just made me more determined. Still, if I’m being truthful here—which I must be, or what’s the point?—I was terrified! Terrified that he wouldn’t find me attractive anymore and I would be forced to choose between my path or the good, sweet loving my man provides. What if he hated it and I loved it? Would that mean he was rejecting me as I am? What would happen if there was a catastrophic event that prevented me from getting razors? Would that be the end our sex life? I calmed myself down and pointed out in my best self-talk that I was getting way ahead of myself. I might end up hating it and, at least for the time being, he was onboard.
About a week into the grow out, my underarm hair was the longest it had ever been in my life. I alerted Steve to this milestone moment. He said, “Let me see.” So I lifted up my arm and he laughed. “Where?” I felt insulted. “I know it’s not a lot, but still, it’s the most I’ve ever had.” (Indeed it was only a bit of stubble, but I had been very diligent over the years so it was a lot to me.) Holding back his laughter, if not his amusement, he said, “Well you can’t blame it for being confused. You’ve been hacking it off since it first showed up.” I burst into a fit of laughter. It was going to be slow going I guessed.
Today I’m nearly two weeks into it and there still isn’t much to speak of in the way of hair. I’m less worried about Steve being able to adapt than I am about me being able to. He assures me that he is still open. “You never know, I might not mind it at all. Maybe I’ll even find it sexy. Who knows?” What a good sport. He’s had his own cultural conditioning too, you know. Now I’m left to deal with the other insecurities that arise from this exercise. What will my friends and family think of me? Will I be stereotyped? What assumptions will new acquaintances make? Will I be categorized, ostracized, discounted? Does it even matter so long as I accept myself?
There are practical considerations too. Do you smell more? Does regular deodorant work on hairy pits too? (It must since Steve and I use the same kind and he smells fine.) Should I stop wearing tank tops and sleeveless shirts? Will I be ruling out strapless gowns forever? Do you trim it?
Such a strange little world I live in where such a natural thing can cause this much concern. Surely men still wanted women a hundred years ago before legs and armpits were shorn to the skin. Surely they still want them now in nearly every country outside of the English speaking world. But I live in this time and in this place and that requires me to think a bit, about fashion, approval, and whether it is really about male attraction or how women pressure other women. I guess I’m about it find out.
I began dating my husband Steve in the summer, so you know, shaved legs. When the autumn was upon us I gently broke it to him on a road trip. I don’t shave my legs in the cold months. At first he was shocked and I think a little scared. So I said, “Fine. I’ll shave my legs for you if you shave yours for me.” Of course he wasn’t going to shave his legs. He’s a man! Within minutes he saw my perspective and said he’d be open. Much to his surprise, he didn’t mind at all. Now he describes my winter legs as silky and genuinely doesn’t even notice when I start shaving my legs again in the summer.
So back to the armpitd. When the women involved in the Facebook discussion talked about underarm hair I caught myself having the thought, I don’t even know what my underarm hair looks like. Then I felt strangely perturbed. In admitting that I didn’t know what it looked like, I admitted that I had, through cultural coercion, denied my natural self to such a degree that I was content—until that moment—to spend my entire life not knowing what my God-given self looked like. That just seemed wrong.
I made the decision to let my underarm hair grow in. When I told Steve of my plan, he smiled. “I can see why you would want to, but I don’t think you’ll make it. I think you’ll shave it before it’s grown out.” That just made me more determined. Still, if I’m being truthful here—which I must be, or what’s the point?—I was terrified! Terrified that he wouldn’t find me attractive anymore and I would be forced to choose between my path or the good, sweet loving my man provides. What if he hated it and I loved it? Would that mean he was rejecting me as I am? What would happen if there was a catastrophic event that prevented me from getting razors? Would that be the end our sex life? I calmed myself down and pointed out in my best self-talk that I was getting way ahead of myself. I might end up hating it and, at least for the time being, he was onboard.
About a week into the grow out, my underarm hair was the longest it had ever been in my life. I alerted Steve to this milestone moment. He said, “Let me see.” So I lifted up my arm and he laughed. “Where?” I felt insulted. “I know it’s not a lot, but still, it’s the most I’ve ever had.” (Indeed it was only a bit of stubble, but I had been very diligent over the years so it was a lot to me.) Holding back his laughter, if not his amusement, he said, “Well you can’t blame it for being confused. You’ve been hacking it off since it first showed up.” I burst into a fit of laughter. It was going to be slow going I guessed.
Today I’m nearly two weeks into it and there still isn’t much to speak of in the way of hair. I’m less worried about Steve being able to adapt than I am about me being able to. He assures me that he is still open. “You never know, I might not mind it at all. Maybe I’ll even find it sexy. Who knows?” What a good sport. He’s had his own cultural conditioning too, you know. Now I’m left to deal with the other insecurities that arise from this exercise. What will my friends and family think of me? Will I be stereotyped? What assumptions will new acquaintances make? Will I be categorized, ostracized, discounted? Does it even matter so long as I accept myself?
There are practical considerations too. Do you smell more? Does regular deodorant work on hairy pits too? (It must since Steve and I use the same kind and he smells fine.) Should I stop wearing tank tops and sleeveless shirts? Will I be ruling out strapless gowns forever? Do you trim it?
Such a strange little world I live in where such a natural thing can cause this much concern. Surely men still wanted women a hundred years ago before legs and armpits were shorn to the skin. Surely they still want them now in nearly every country outside of the English speaking world. But I live in this time and in this place and that requires me to think a bit, about fashion, approval, and whether it is really about male attraction or how women pressure other women. I guess I’m about it find out.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Out of Anxiety -- Part IV -- Self-care, Fundamental Changes in Thought
Self-care is a whopper so I’m going to do it in two parts: Fundamental Changes in Thought and Basic Self-Care
Fundamental Changes in Thought
When I was at my worst point during the adoption, I found myself pushing and prodding myself to continue the process despite realizing that the chaotic conditions, the endless waiting and worrying, and the constant fear that it would all fall through were taking a toll on my health. Everyday more and more of my ability to function was slipping away. The little that I had to give went into caring for the girls and soon that was beginning to slip too. Still, I worried about Steve. I worried whether or not he would stay married to me if I called it off. I worried what people would think of a woman who couldn’t finish the process of bringing an orphaned child into a better life. I worried about all the stories that certain people kept throwing at me about attachment disorders. I was afraid that the love I had to give would never be enough. These last thoughts made it clear to me that I was not ready to be an adoptive parent. I was deeply ashamed of myself and fearful if I talked to anyone about them that I would be thought less of. I felt that he deserved better than that from a parent. But what I didn’t recognize was that I deserved something better too. I deserved to know that if I wasn’t ready or hardy enough for the uncertain process of adoption then that was enough of a reason to stop. Ultimately, it was my job to take care of myself first if I was ever going to be of any use to my two current children, let alone the one on the way. Those days were the most difficult days of my life.
Sadly, I wasn’t brought up to believe that my needs were very important. I was always the giver, the fixer, the doer. I came last in my life, and at the time of the adoption I was still coming last on the list. Even while I was coming apart at the seams, I was still putting everyone else first. My experience with anxiety was inevitable. Eventually, adoption or not, I would have ended up there.
The good news is that anxiety taught me that my old ways of living weren’t working and that I had to change. One of those ways I already mentioned--I had to reprogram my self-talk to be reassuring, patient, forgiving, optimistic and more reflective of reality. I had to teach myself that the world was NOT going to come tumbling down if I made a mistake or couldn’t live up to an invisible and external standard. The second and equally important thing anxiety taught me was that I had to put myself first some of the time, because if I didn’t, anxiety wasn’t going to be a phase in my life, it was going to be my life in its entirety.
Before I could even begin to address this issue, I had to be clear that I was ready and WORTHY of being cared for. If your experience was anything like mine, feeling worthy after a lifelong sense of worthlessness might seem insurmountable. So for now, just take it from me. No matter what any person, culture or religion tells you, you are just as important as the person sitting next to you. Recognizing that you are worthy is the first fundamental change in thought that has to take place or everything else falls away. As you begin taking care of yourself as laid out in Basic Self-Care you will be sending yourself the daily message that you are loveable and worthy of goodness.
Though intrinsically tied to the first change, the second warrants having its own line item. You have value outside of your ability to serve. This is particularly hard for people who have a theosophy which centers around their purpose of existence being to serve and praise God. It would take me a lot longer than a few lines to address this issue, but I will say that there is ample reason to have been created by God that has nothing to do with endless service and praise. I truly believe that God’s love extends beyond our ability to give anything in return. You can only do so much for others while not caring for yourself before you fall into an unhealthy state of resentment, ill-health or destructive coping. I’m pretty sure that’s not what God was going for.
There are other reasons to de-emphasize service to others. Firstly, there is value in allowing others to be of service to you when you need it. In allowing someone to care for you, you establish a bond of love and their gift reinforces your sense of being worthy and loveable. Secondly, there are times when being of service is not appropriate. I have experienced many times in my life where I have not been self-aware enough to know what motivates my impetus to serve. I learned the hard way that in blindly giving you can ultimately end up hurting yourself or the person you mean to help. Knowing why you feel compelled to serve requires time for reflection and a deeper understanding of your own needs. The better you understand what it means to care for yourself, the better you will be able to care for others. Excessive anxiety is a good indicator that you are not taking care of yourself in a fundamental way. As Anne Morrow Lindbergh said, “If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.”
In Mary Oliver’s poem The Journey, she describes the moment when she realizes that she has to leave behind the needs of others and focus on hearing the voice of her own need. (See the link to the left.) This beautiful poem is a difficult one for me to read. I, like so many others I know, have had relationships that were vampiric in nature, where I felt obligated to make another’s life “okay”. I have felt the pull to “mend” another’s life while my own was falling apart. I too have struggled to turn away from the pain of those around me even when my own pain was too much to bear. Still, does a drowning person ever save a drowning person?
Sometimes, when a person is first learning about their own needs and how to meet them, it becomes necessary to put “high need” or unhealthy relationships on pause. This can be particularly difficult if the person on the other end of that relationship is a parent, spouse or adult child. A person who relies on you for a great deal will not likely appreciate having that energetic supply removed. Still, I have found this to be good advice. Temporarily removing myself from these relationships enabled me to better focus on understanding myself, my function in the relationship, and what steps I needed to take to improve the relationship for my own mental health.
So much of how we feel, how we perceive the world, and our ability to experience happiness, is internal and fluctuating. The responsibility to make and keep another happy is a moving bar that we will seldom be able to reach. In the end you will fail and consequently feel like a failure despite the fact that the task was impossible to begin with. By adopting good self-care habits and recognizing your own value, you will be better able to set boundaries and provide useful, healthy assistance to those in need. You will also be able to better identify unreasonable or unhealthy pleas for your attention.
The last fundamental change in thought is the ability to differentiate between want and need. In the busyness of our culture we often confuse these two ideas. Needs, which are covered in a general sense in the Basic Self-Care section to follow, are required for good physical and mental health. Wants are everything outside of that. The big exception to this is, of course, the requirements of parenting. Children need to be fed and held and nurtured, but these days much of what I see parents killing themselves over is not need. It’s want. Examples of need are ample sleep, regular nutritious meals and snacks, access to water, moments of quiet where nothing is required, hygiene, physical and emotional safety, affirmation and affection, clear and established boundaries, and an outlet for emotions. Wants are things like extracurricular activities such as sports and music lessons, a perfectly clean and orderly home, volunteer activities, time in front of the television, video games, and junk food. Doing regular activities with your child demonstrates interest in your child’s life and development. However, constant doing is not healthy. It teaches children that their value exists in doing and not in simply being.
If you are a constant doer like I was, stop to consider the possibility that your “doing” is masking your “feeling.” Permit yourself to say no to an activity in favor of a bubble bath, or force yourself to just sit for 20 on the couch with nothing in hand, TV off, no conversation. Notice how that makes you feel. Are you more anxious? Do you feel useless? If so, you may have figured out something really important about yourself and the root of your anxiety. When your value is in doing, anxiety is not far away. When will you have done enough? When you do in order to avoid feeling, anxiety is the manifestation of your repressed feelings. You will have to stop the doing and feel the feelings before your anxiety will subside. This anxiety is often associated with a fear of losing control of yourself whilst experiencing intense emotions. If this is you, you may want to seek the services of a trained therapist to help you establish a safe place for those feelings to come to the surface.
Eliminating the unnecessary doing creates space for your feelings to be addressed. In my effort to declutter my life, I found it useful to make a list of the things I had planned for the day and break them up into want and need. Needs got first priority, then came wants that fed my joy and growth. Everything else that just took up space or that I was doing to meet someone else’s standard got dumped. Once I started doing this, I found that my anxiety was lessened and more manageable. When I had moments of intense emotion I was better able to process those feelings because there was space and energy in my life for that work. I also spent more time interacting and engaging with my kids, more time talking and listening to my husband and I had more energy for my friendships.
So to recap the fundamental changes in thought: 1) You are worthy of being cared for by yourself and by others. 2) You have value outside of your ability to serve. 3) You have to understand and help yourself before you can be of service to others in a healthy way. You may have to put relationships temporarily to accomplish this. 4) Differentiate between want and need. Then use this new understanding to reprioritize and declutter your life and to create space for feeling.
Fundamental Changes in Thought
When I was at my worst point during the adoption, I found myself pushing and prodding myself to continue the process despite realizing that the chaotic conditions, the endless waiting and worrying, and the constant fear that it would all fall through were taking a toll on my health. Everyday more and more of my ability to function was slipping away. The little that I had to give went into caring for the girls and soon that was beginning to slip too. Still, I worried about Steve. I worried whether or not he would stay married to me if I called it off. I worried what people would think of a woman who couldn’t finish the process of bringing an orphaned child into a better life. I worried about all the stories that certain people kept throwing at me about attachment disorders. I was afraid that the love I had to give would never be enough. These last thoughts made it clear to me that I was not ready to be an adoptive parent. I was deeply ashamed of myself and fearful if I talked to anyone about them that I would be thought less of. I felt that he deserved better than that from a parent. But what I didn’t recognize was that I deserved something better too. I deserved to know that if I wasn’t ready or hardy enough for the uncertain process of adoption then that was enough of a reason to stop. Ultimately, it was my job to take care of myself first if I was ever going to be of any use to my two current children, let alone the one on the way. Those days were the most difficult days of my life.
Sadly, I wasn’t brought up to believe that my needs were very important. I was always the giver, the fixer, the doer. I came last in my life, and at the time of the adoption I was still coming last on the list. Even while I was coming apart at the seams, I was still putting everyone else first. My experience with anxiety was inevitable. Eventually, adoption or not, I would have ended up there.
The good news is that anxiety taught me that my old ways of living weren’t working and that I had to change. One of those ways I already mentioned--I had to reprogram my self-talk to be reassuring, patient, forgiving, optimistic and more reflective of reality. I had to teach myself that the world was NOT going to come tumbling down if I made a mistake or couldn’t live up to an invisible and external standard. The second and equally important thing anxiety taught me was that I had to put myself first some of the time, because if I didn’t, anxiety wasn’t going to be a phase in my life, it was going to be my life in its entirety.
Before I could even begin to address this issue, I had to be clear that I was ready and WORTHY of being cared for. If your experience was anything like mine, feeling worthy after a lifelong sense of worthlessness might seem insurmountable. So for now, just take it from me. No matter what any person, culture or religion tells you, you are just as important as the person sitting next to you. Recognizing that you are worthy is the first fundamental change in thought that has to take place or everything else falls away. As you begin taking care of yourself as laid out in Basic Self-Care you will be sending yourself the daily message that you are loveable and worthy of goodness.
Though intrinsically tied to the first change, the second warrants having its own line item. You have value outside of your ability to serve. This is particularly hard for people who have a theosophy which centers around their purpose of existence being to serve and praise God. It would take me a lot longer than a few lines to address this issue, but I will say that there is ample reason to have been created by God that has nothing to do with endless service and praise. I truly believe that God’s love extends beyond our ability to give anything in return. You can only do so much for others while not caring for yourself before you fall into an unhealthy state of resentment, ill-health or destructive coping. I’m pretty sure that’s not what God was going for.
There are other reasons to de-emphasize service to others. Firstly, there is value in allowing others to be of service to you when you need it. In allowing someone to care for you, you establish a bond of love and their gift reinforces your sense of being worthy and loveable. Secondly, there are times when being of service is not appropriate. I have experienced many times in my life where I have not been self-aware enough to know what motivates my impetus to serve. I learned the hard way that in blindly giving you can ultimately end up hurting yourself or the person you mean to help. Knowing why you feel compelled to serve requires time for reflection and a deeper understanding of your own needs. The better you understand what it means to care for yourself, the better you will be able to care for others. Excessive anxiety is a good indicator that you are not taking care of yourself in a fundamental way. As Anne Morrow Lindbergh said, “If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.”
In Mary Oliver’s poem The Journey, she describes the moment when she realizes that she has to leave behind the needs of others and focus on hearing the voice of her own need. (See the link to the left.) This beautiful poem is a difficult one for me to read. I, like so many others I know, have had relationships that were vampiric in nature, where I felt obligated to make another’s life “okay”. I have felt the pull to “mend” another’s life while my own was falling apart. I too have struggled to turn away from the pain of those around me even when my own pain was too much to bear. Still, does a drowning person ever save a drowning person?
Sometimes, when a person is first learning about their own needs and how to meet them, it becomes necessary to put “high need” or unhealthy relationships on pause. This can be particularly difficult if the person on the other end of that relationship is a parent, spouse or adult child. A person who relies on you for a great deal will not likely appreciate having that energetic supply removed. Still, I have found this to be good advice. Temporarily removing myself from these relationships enabled me to better focus on understanding myself, my function in the relationship, and what steps I needed to take to improve the relationship for my own mental health.
So much of how we feel, how we perceive the world, and our ability to experience happiness, is internal and fluctuating. The responsibility to make and keep another happy is a moving bar that we will seldom be able to reach. In the end you will fail and consequently feel like a failure despite the fact that the task was impossible to begin with. By adopting good self-care habits and recognizing your own value, you will be better able to set boundaries and provide useful, healthy assistance to those in need. You will also be able to better identify unreasonable or unhealthy pleas for your attention.
The last fundamental change in thought is the ability to differentiate between want and need. In the busyness of our culture we often confuse these two ideas. Needs, which are covered in a general sense in the Basic Self-Care section to follow, are required for good physical and mental health. Wants are everything outside of that. The big exception to this is, of course, the requirements of parenting. Children need to be fed and held and nurtured, but these days much of what I see parents killing themselves over is not need. It’s want. Examples of need are ample sleep, regular nutritious meals and snacks, access to water, moments of quiet where nothing is required, hygiene, physical and emotional safety, affirmation and affection, clear and established boundaries, and an outlet for emotions. Wants are things like extracurricular activities such as sports and music lessons, a perfectly clean and orderly home, volunteer activities, time in front of the television, video games, and junk food. Doing regular activities with your child demonstrates interest in your child’s life and development. However, constant doing is not healthy. It teaches children that their value exists in doing and not in simply being.
If you are a constant doer like I was, stop to consider the possibility that your “doing” is masking your “feeling.” Permit yourself to say no to an activity in favor of a bubble bath, or force yourself to just sit for 20 on the couch with nothing in hand, TV off, no conversation. Notice how that makes you feel. Are you more anxious? Do you feel useless? If so, you may have figured out something really important about yourself and the root of your anxiety. When your value is in doing, anxiety is not far away. When will you have done enough? When you do in order to avoid feeling, anxiety is the manifestation of your repressed feelings. You will have to stop the doing and feel the feelings before your anxiety will subside. This anxiety is often associated with a fear of losing control of yourself whilst experiencing intense emotions. If this is you, you may want to seek the services of a trained therapist to help you establish a safe place for those feelings to come to the surface.
Eliminating the unnecessary doing creates space for your feelings to be addressed. In my effort to declutter my life, I found it useful to make a list of the things I had planned for the day and break them up into want and need. Needs got first priority, then came wants that fed my joy and growth. Everything else that just took up space or that I was doing to meet someone else’s standard got dumped. Once I started doing this, I found that my anxiety was lessened and more manageable. When I had moments of intense emotion I was better able to process those feelings because there was space and energy in my life for that work. I also spent more time interacting and engaging with my kids, more time talking and listening to my husband and I had more energy for my friendships.
So to recap the fundamental changes in thought: 1) You are worthy of being cared for by yourself and by others. 2) You have value outside of your ability to serve. 3) You have to understand and help yourself before you can be of service to others in a healthy way. You may have to put relationships temporarily to accomplish this. 4) Differentiate between want and need. Then use this new understanding to reprioritize and declutter your life and to create space for feeling.
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