Seeking the Safe Zone

Lately, when I get anxious or start to feel like I'm freaking out, my chest feels weird - heavy, maybe? I have no idea how to describe physically what it feels like; all I can say is that I feel the anxiety in my chest. It feels like the physical manifestation of dread. I also feel heat creep up on the back of my neck (this physical reaction is a newbie). My stomach drops, the same way it does when you know you're about to get really bad news. Good times, right? Not really, no.

Any time there is a "threat" of the stomach flu making it's way to my house, I get this reaction. This means that if we spend time one day with you and/or your kids, and you text me later to tell me that little Mary-Sue was up all night that night puking her face off, my body reacts as described above and I immediately start doing math (this is significant, because we all know that I hate math).

Okay, she was fine when we saw her. Then 8 hours later, she started vomiting. There is a good likelihood that she was already infected with the virus, but asymptomatic. So whatever she touched that my kids touched could have had the virus on it. Google tells me that, though stomach bugs tend to move pretty quickly, they can incubate for up to five days, but typically two to three). Well, we saw Mary-Sue on Thursday afternoon, so if the boys are going to get sick, it's likely going to be Friday, Saturday, or up to Sunday night. After that, if we haven't had any issues, we're probably "safe", although we won't be completely out of the woods until we make it through Monday and Tuesday night with no issues. I can't wait for Wednesday when we're in the "safe zone."

Right. Because there is such a thing as a "safe zone". Because they couldn't possibly pick up a gastro illness from somewhere else, lurking sneakily when I have no idea and do not have the benefit of being told later, by the way, that shopping cart that the kids touched? yeah, the person who touched it before you was actually sick with the stomach flu. I am not a total moron; I do know and understand this logically. But, still, I do the math and figure out where the hell the "safe zone" is so that I can look forward to that day.

Welcome to my brain, folks. This is the thinking process that anxiety sets into motion once I realize that we have been exposed to the deadly virus known to others as the stomach flu (which isn't actually a thing, by the way. Influenza is not the "stomach flu". Gastrointestinal viruses are different and not referred to, medically, as a flu at all.) In any case, I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to know how illogical something is (such as counting the days to determine on which day we enter the "safe zone"), but to feel compelled (or ordered by anxiety) to do it anyway. It's desperation. It's desperation to make that anxious feeling go away. It's knowing that for those next three days (okay, five days) that I'm not going to be exhaling in a way that is actually relieving, and desperately seeking that moment when I can exhale and allow the sensation of utter relief to pass over my body.

There are, as I've already alluded to above, a number of problems with the concept of the safe-zone, including (most notably) that it doesn't exist. But beyond its failure to exist anywhere except my anxious brain, the "safe zone" becomes the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow during cold and flu season, when it seems that everyone and their neighbour's sister's cousin's, ex-boyfriend's dog-walker has pukes or the runs. I'm constantly chasing that day five mark, only to find out on the evening of day four that someone else we know is now sick. It feels like it never ends. I feel like it narrows in on us. We're becoming enclosed. I feel like I'm in a batting cage and just as my heart rate is starting to slow down after dodging a hit to the face, another one comes hurdling and I'm scared I'm not going to dodge this one. I feel like I can't catch a break, or take a good, deep breath.

And this, my friends, is what my anxiety is like. It's the anticipation and pure dread of being the victim of this absolutely awful thing.

*SIDE NOTE: One of the interesting things my therapist said to me at my session last Thursday was that the balls are really marshmallows, not actual baseballs. The thing is that while a stomach bug is uncomfortable, it isn't really dangerous - at least not in the way my anxiety tries to tell me it is. It is a normal part of being alive -- being human -- in the same way that getting a cold is. But anxiety really ups the ante when it comes to a stomach illness. Anxiety sees the ball coming (in the form of hearing about a stomach bug) and alerts my physical body that we have clear and present danger, so we need to pump up that adrenalyn to move quickly enough so as to avoid being hit with this very hard, very fast, very dangerous ball. But there is no ball. So I get all of this pent up physical tension for nothing. And, even when the stomach virus does "hit" out house, it comes and then it goes. It's not a thing nevermind a danger. But, in case I haven't made this clear enough, anxiety is a relentless bully that continually yells in your ear and tries to push you around, so it continues on with this story of grave danger.* Sorry that was so long, but I found the analogy a really good one.