I Can Control it
Welcome to Day 4 of week 2 of the Body Theme— This week, we are talking about 4 common messages that keep us out of our bodies and prevent us from slowing down, a key step in quieting anxiety. Today’s message is you can control your body.
This message is 100% a Monger message and is 100% wrong. We can’t control our bodies—that may come as a shocker to you, ha! I know I tried for decades and still catch myself trying to push through sickness, fatigue, or pain, only realizing later that made not only the sickness, fatigue, and pain 10000 times worse but also my anxiety spiked too.
A few years ago, I broke my ankle. I was sentenced to eight weeks of no walking or driving, followed by PT. It was a time in my life when I felt completely out of control. Luckily I traded in my crutches for a knee scooter which gave me a little more independence. I remember going to work for the first time and realizing the no elevator office building would require me to crawl up the stairs with my husband carrying my scooter. Tears were usually involved, but there was little compassion for myself, mostly anger at my body not cooperating. I was full of anger and, therefore, anxiety at how my body had betrayed me, rather than understanding that my body was hurt and recuperating.
I depended on my husband to help me get around the house and as my chauffeur to anywhere I wanted to go. But as the weeks wore on, my anxiety was higher and higher, and my Monger insisted on telling me to be more independent—you can control your body, just push harder. So I did, challenging myself to do more around the house and depend less on my husband because dependence is weak. One day I was meeting a friend for coffee a few blocks from our house. My husband dropped me off, and we had plans for me to call him when I was done. I had a lovely time chatting with my friend, and when we had finished coffee, she offered to drive me home. “No, no,” I insisted. “We have a plan. I will call Doug, and he will pick me up.” We hugged, and she headed home. But I didn’t call Doug; instead, I listened to my Monger, “COME ON. You don’t need Doug—you need to challenge yourself. You have the knee scooter—just scoot home.” So I did. I pushed myself to scoot the five city blocks home. At first, it was exhilarating, pushing myself down the street—our neighborhood has a lot of alleys, so I used the alleys rather than the sidewalk. But after a while, my pushing leg started to hurt, and my hip muscle was burning in pain. Keep pushing, my Monger said; if you go faster, you will get there faster—don’t slow down, keep pushing. You can do this.
Looking back, I know this was the ultimate I can control my body scenario. I was defeated from having to depend on people—my anxiety was high from feeling unproductive and therefore incompetent, so that day, I let my Monger win. And I paid the price. When I got home, my hip was on fire with pain, and I spent the next two days miserable because I had overdone it. My desire for control left me more out of control than ever. If I could go back, I would have had more compassion for my body, more understanding of myself and how hard it was. Standing at the street corner, I wish I would have practiced A.S.K.
A acknowledge your feelings: cheerful after having coffee with a friend, annoyed, frustrated, insecure, powerless, pitied, irritated and distressed about my ankle.
S. Slow down and get into your body—stretched my hips and touched my toes (on the one leg I was standing on)
K-Kindly pull back and see the big picture—ok, you want to have some independence, and it is too far to go this whole way by yourself. What if you have Doug meet you part of the way?
That example is an extreme example of the Monger telling me to control my body. But it shows up in small ways too. Our Monger tells us it is not that bad when we get sick. Suck it up and control the symptoms. When we are tired, our Monger tells us to control our exhaustion—as a client recently said to me, she used to get mad at her body for being tired—we are so used to believing we can control our bodies it is challenging to catch it when we do.
As with everything we are discussing in these two weeks of the body theme, the key is noticing the unhealthy messages we are telling ourselves that prevent us from having loyalty to our bodies. The story of me pushing myself to get home, ignoring my body’s pain and exhaustion, and my husband’s kindness in offering me a ride was me focusing 100% on listening to my Monger telling me I could control my body. I learned a lot about self-loyalty the day I scooted myself all the way home--in deprogramming these messages, sometimes it is the days we mess up the most that we learn the most about ourselves.