The Fear Response

When we feel threatened, thousands of year of evolution tell us to fight or to run, to be afraid, to preserve ourselves at any cost. Even when the threat is imaginary. It takes about 20 minutes for an adrenaline surge to leave your system. This means that even when you perceive a threat that you can dismiss in one second, it takes about 1200 times that long for your body to be back to normal.

Emotions make it all even harder. Our brains tell us things based on what is familiar, giving meaning to scenarios that are new by remembering the old, filling in impossible to know information with phony details created on assumption. This often perpetuates the physiological response, making mountains out of molehills. Fun times.

Last night I was in a pretty dark place. When I wrote my post, my heart was beating fast, I was hot, I was keenly aware of how volatile I felt. I felt out of control. But I had some control. I knew my body was overreacting. I couldn't control my body's response to way too many stressful things at once, but I could control knowing that I was overreacting. In that moment I got away from my family and let my partner deal with crazy Pablo. I had the baby, but I hugged her and thought sweet thoughts about her to remind myself that usually things are fine and she is not always so fussy and high need. I didn't handle everything ideally, but I tried my best to overcome my adrenaline reaction. As a child of an angry parent, this is a pretty big deal. I am so much better than I was 10 years ago, 5 years ago, 1 year ago. But it is not enough.

There is no way to turn off the fear reaction once it has started. The only way to deal with the fear response is to not have it in the first place. Save the fear reaction for things you truly cannot control. Like tornadoes. Earthquakes. Creepy footsteps coming after you down an alley on a dark night.

I get really attached to my night time down time. When it is infringed upon, I feel threatened as if my life were at stake. Obviously this means I don't get enough down time. However, what really caused my suffering was not my time being threatened, but my attachment to all the meanings I had imbued that time with. One night of Pablo and Beebz having a hard bedtime simultaneously is hard, but not life or death by any measure. But since I had equated my time being cut into with me getting NOTHING, I saw it as much more of a threat than it actually was. And my fear response was triggered. And I suffered for it. We all did.

I need to take better care of myself, but there is just nothing for me to give to me. My allergies have me exhausted. The baby is quite possibly teething in addition to her stranger anxiety, so she is super grumpy and high need. Pablo is high need right now, possibly due to his sister getting more mobile and more interactive (ie more of a threat to his domain). My partner does what she can, but there is just not enough time. It is all so hard.

It is times like these that I really need to be meditating. It is times like these that I have no time for meditating. These days even ten seconds is too much.