(Originally published on Motherless Mom, May 19, 2019)
Growing up, there was a family member who was often anxious. She would clutch her chest and look panicked while breathlessly saying something like, “My anxiety is just real REAL bad right now” and her eyes would kind of bug out of her head as she panicked for what I thought was no reason. I filed this away in my mind under what anxiety looks like, and that was that.
Fast forward to 30-something-me sitting in therapy as I tried to get a handle on the PPD I had had for years that kept me in rage mode almost non-stop with my babies. The medication that had saved our lives was now giving me other not-so-fun side-effects and I was looking to wean off them and try the good, old-fashioned “Gut-Through-This-Shit” method. My therapist asked me if I’ve ever been medicated specifically for my anxiety. I smirked at this and thought, oh no. This lady hasn’t been listening to me at all. I have never had anxiety before!
That was the day that I learned that rage is often just anxiety playing dress-up and anxiety plays dress-up with a few different costumes: Apparently I’d been wearing them all my life.
It took working with a couple of different therapists to really start to see how big of a part this anxiety piece had played in the puzzle of my life, and it went waaaaay back.
As the daughter of high-functioning alcoholics in the 80s and 90s when parenting expectations were hugely different than they are today, a lot of my childhood was full of an anxiety that I didn’t recognize because it was just the norm. My parents loved us all and did an amazing job raising us with the tools that they had, but I now see that a lot of those early experiences did have more of an impact on who I grew up to be than I’d ever realized.
My home environments as a kid often required me to be on hyper-alert; I was a built-in babysitter from the age of 7 on. I grew up looking to take care, watch out, be careful, pay attention— my brain was being wired for fear.
Specifically for me, it was fear about keeping people safe. This is where most of my anxiety with my kids is about. Want to see me lose my frickin’ mind? Go with me and the kids to a crowded place like a fair or a carnival. You’ll hear me working overtime to reassure myself with my continuous self-talk and a lot of excessive planning/attempts to control our environment. Just writing about it makes me feel a little panicky!
But all of this fear never presented as me acting out anxiety as I had seen it play out in others. No, fear has always made me hyper-cautious and curious and obsessive and controlling and when I could no longer control my surroundings and the people in them, it made me angry— enraged, even.
In an incredible article by Elizabeth Broadbent, “I Thought I Was Turning Into A Rage Monster. Then I Was Diagnosed With Anxiety,” Broadbent writes about her realization that her rage was just a manifestation of her anxiety and overwhelm. She shares how she tries to look beyond the anxiety at what is behind it and this technique has been monumentally helpful for me, as well.
My anger begins to dissolve when I pinpoint what the anxious concern behind it is. It kind of feels like it takes the wind out of my anger-sails. For example, I might feel myself growing pissy about making yet another snack for my bottomless pit of a 4 year-old, but the thing that’s really driving my irritation has nothing to do with her. It’s usually something beyond her like I’m trying to meet a school or work deadline or to get us out of the house to keep an appointment. Snapping at her angrily isn’t going to be helpful for anybody in this situation, but if I can flip the script from growing irritation to one of sincere curiosity, I can stop the oncoming rage-storm.
Interrupting that neural network of anger is what is happening when I look beyond the anger and try to determine what is actually triggering me. I have to cultivate a genuine curiosity and ask myself: What is this really about?
For myself, it’s often that feeling of not being in control; I have had to do a lot of work on my self to even get to the point where I can acknowledge that this is an issue for me.
Once I can point to what is really behind the anger, I can do the self-talk that is so helpful for me to re-frame the narrative of what’s happening. I do this ALL. THE. TIME.
My self-talk might sound something like this: “Okay, she needs a snack. Why does this upset you? You’re not upset that she’s hungry again. You’re really upset because you’re worried you won’t make it out the door in time, but you can easily make this snack and it will take all of one minute and she will eat and you will get everything else ready to go. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy-no problem at all. You have plenty of time. Just have to keep moving.”
The narratives that I use for myself to interrupt my anxiety/rage spiral are basically just me talking to myself the way I talk to my kids when they’re stressed out about something. I try to acknowledge the fear, keep it light and breezy, and let the tightness and angst dissipate.
One of the hardest parts of working to flip the script of my anxiety is that I have had to figure out how to be okay with relinquishing control. I can’t control every aspect of my environment. I can’t control every action and reaction of my children, and the older they get the more opportunity I have had to practice handling this! As they continue to become more independent and self-sufficient (yes, at the ripe old ages of 6 & 4!) it has become much easier for me to work on myself and my own baggage, like some of the unhealthy coping mechanisms I developed over my life to handle my anxiety (thanks for the help, eating disorder, now it’s time for you to go ahead and eff off!) and this has been hugely helpful in my relationship with my children. They are and always will be the reason I continue to push myself and the reason I will never settle for “just ok.”