The High Priestess of Future Redemption Chatter
One of my favorite podcasters, Dan Harris of Ten Percent Happier (hey, I’m not above name dropping), said, in a seemingly offhand way, something that struck me like a bolt of lightning. Paraphrase here: “There’s a subtle aggression in self-improvement.” Woah – emphatic yes!
Some of the greatest hits from my self-talk, which is representative of ~50 years of a song on chronic repeat:
Me to myself: This time will be different. This diet, this plan, this approach, this narrative…this fix.
I’ll start tomorrow and then just watch how different I’ll be. I’ll barely resemble myself. People won’t even recognize me.
Oh! THIS is the solution I’ve been searching for my whole life. I’ve finally figured it out. THIS (breathwork, therapeutic approach, narrative, eating philosophy) provides answers to all of my problems.
I sent my sister a screenshot of my favorite meme (because – like communicating in a first language, we default to meme-speak), which says, “All of my plans for the future involve me waking up tomorrow with a sudden sense of discipline and adherence to routine that I have never displayed even once in my life.”
That meme prompted to christen myself The High Priestess of Future Redemption Chatter. I’m pretty fond of that title, and I’m going in search of my tiara. Because that’s truly ~80% of the noise in my mind – planning, scheming, strategizing, FIXING myself.
Podcast junkie that I am, I picked up another pearl of insight from therapist Carla Naumberg, who BTW wrote one of the best titled books ever (You Are Not a Shitty Parent), when she was interviewed on Psychotherapists Off the Clock: there’s another F in the litany of Fs that constitute the face of anxiety. In addition to fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, there’s fixing (or, said another way, figuring it out). Those darn Fs. They get me every time.
One of my clients told me recently, “We’ve been working together for what? Around a year and half? And still, STILL, I forget the truth that my feelings aren’t dangerous. That I can care for myself regardless of what shows up inside me. I’m not broken, and I’m not a problem to be fixed.” Amen, sister.
Anxiety, uncertainty, recognition that we don’t have control – that’s what takes me out Every.Single.Day.
I’m not even sure that I have a point to this blog post, except to invite others into my tribe of kindred spirits where you, too, can claim a tiara. Maybe if we all start wearing our crowns out into the world, we’ll see how pervasive this pattern is. And those tiaras will signal, “No brokenness here.”
Our nervous systems are designed to recognize and address threats. My anxiety wants to keep me safe. The nature of my particular nervous system (and seemingly 99.9% of the rest of the world’s nervous systems) is such that it’s wired like a hyperactive smoke alarm, and it keeps going off when I just very slightly overcook toast. “Shhhh, shhhhh,” I want to say to myself in a soft soothing tone. “It’s okay. No danger here. Rest, rest. All is well.” And then, I can simply straighten my tiara and move on with my day.