Recently, I started focusing more on my mental & emotional health, partially nudged by all the reflection & self-disruption as of late caused by this commitment. (My son also compounds this need to be healthier & happier, which often sits at odds with my behavioral patterns for coping.) You see, I tend to get the most professional reward, at least on the surface & with more immediate returns, for throwing myself into my work & professional achievements than I do for taking better care of my body & self. It’s as if I can’t find balance between body & mind. People like successful people… People who are seen as achievers, successful, confident, with jet-set lifestyles of privilege, travel, luxury. Even if it comes at a high cost.
The “all or nothing” mindset certainly isn’t a healthy one, largely fed from perfectionism & anxiety. I’ve long wondered why am I this way? Why do I always feel a need to be better, more than, striving for a new, higher goal?
This puzzle has been one I’ve never been able to solve. Based on reading recommendations, I just started reading Mark Wolynn’s It Didn’t Start with You, a book focused on research tied to trauma, genetics, & how inheriting trauma is a real thing, embedded in our DNA. Citing the work of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (I also have his The Body Keeps the Score), Wolynn describes stories & strategies for locating the roots of our emotional legacies, ones carried down through three generations. It’s fascinating to think about, given all the trauma I know my mother, her mother, & her mother’s mother endured. There’s a lot there to unpack.
And my own anxiety never had a name & wasn’t even diagnosed until the prospect of becoming a mother, myself. So, there must be connection there, somewhere.
As a child, I had experienced a great deal of fear without knowing exactly why, experiencing a need to often hide or lock myself away. Later, I’d remember key events mainly through family storytelling of rather disturbing events turned into gallows humor, which triggered upsetting memories. The family shared these disturbing stories, over & over again, to great amounts of laughter. The stories were told everytime we got together for a holiday or barbeque. The family humor in retrospect reminds me of a strategy Mark Twain used in satire, humor as a way to disarm & then reveal very serious wrongs to the listener. When the laughter would end, the listener would be left to grapple with “Why did I even laugh about that? That’s really messed up, when you think about it.”
Maybe that’s why I have become a reader of stories, a professional researcher & teacher of storytelling? Maybe there are stories I’m still trying to understand & process?
As I continue to reflect on the causes of my anxiety, I’m finding moments of time carved out of my schedule for reading & remembering, things I’ve been long avoiding because it’s easier to throw myself into work & career. I don’t want to feel rejected, lonely, scared, helpless. Who really wants to connect to hurt & shame? But this is the work of vulnerability. And starting a new job where I want to make strong positive impressions as an indispensable worker/contributor fuels the feverish work pace that counters what’s healthy for my mind & body. My body has been signaling very strongly that I need to take better care of myself… Months of illness have borne this out, much to my chagrin.
More to come as I continue to explore the research of trauma & family legacy, which I do hope will inform my work in terms of helping students like veterans, refugees, & abuse survivors. I have a feeling there’s a lot to discover & learn.
