Fight or flight

In my head and in my heart I am the kind of mom who supports my kids as they feel intense feelings. In real life I am the kind of mom who starts yelling "STOP CRYING!" internally gasping in horror as I imagine the therapy my children will need to learn how to feel their feelings after their mother repeatedly told them to stop. Recently I read an essay written by a mom about how she responds to her daughter's tantrums and how the responses teach her daughter emotional intelligence. I felt a tiny flash of shame and desire, sad that I didn't do what she did and full of a wish to learn to do that. Those feelings were followed by  emphatically shutting off my phone and patting myself on the back for doing my best and trying really hard to keep doing better. Parenthood brings up the consistent wish that I had no flaws with which to damage my children as well as the constant reminder that I have the opportunity to show them how to be a flawed person who keeps trying.

The other night I lay on the floor of my kids' bedroom waiting for them to fall asleep. I started to weep, curled into my left side on the stained carpet. The tears came quietly: my kids didn't notice. I was grieving a relationship that is changing and feeling the hurt and fear fill me up. The tears came after several days of my own emotional upheaval, during which time my mind was racing circles within its inflexible container. Outrun, find a way to fix it, make a change, do something! The tears came, a relief. And I saw so clearly how much I hate feeling sad. Or mad. Or scared. I don't just hate it, I want to get as far away from it all as I can, by almost any means necessary.

I have spent most of my life trying not to feel my feelings. And not just because they are painful but because my whole body goes into a major fight or flight response, all of my parts straining to get the hell away from the thing that is causing the pain. But the thing causing the pain is. . . in me. My heart.

The fight or flight comes up with my kids too which is tough because three and four year olds are kinda nuts. I mean, they're supposed to be. Everything is new. The can speak more words than they truly understand. They are growing and forming and changing so much. They fly into rages or tears or tantrums and often they are totally irrational--at least to me. There is always some kind of explanation if any of us were calm and rested enough to sit there and find it. My well-educated mind can tell me that most of what they do is developmentally appropriate. That these small humans don't have the words to express all of the feelings that are coming over them. In fact, they are most likely in a state similar to mine--being flooded and not knowing what to do. My heart wants these beloved, amazing people to feel safe and cherished no matter what. I would love to sit on the floor and calmly put a hand on a screaming child, telling her "I'm here," and letting the feelings wash over her until she is ready to move on. I don't want them to be like me, afraid of my own fear. Afraid of my own rage. Afraid of my own grief. But my mind and my heart take a back seat to my body, awash in messages telling me to do anything I can to shut that shit down. What a relief to finally be paying attention to my body so I can notice these things are happening. And to have teachers and coaches who confirm that yes, my body is often in fight or flight and it doesn't need to stay that way. That is a coping mechanism that I don't need anymore. We can fix it with a lot of different kinds of hard work.

I don't recall ever experiencing the fight or flight during any of my many babysitting experiences. In fact, one of the reasons I was such a baby whisperer before I was a mama was because babies could feel the calm radiating from my body into theirs once I picked them up. I was unphased by crying and it never lasted long because of that--babies and kids settled right into my chill and stopped. But mamahood? Totally different. Maybe partly because I have so many. Yeah, that's a lot of it. With one at a time I might have been able to gut it out. With four it comes as a torrent. The whining and the crying often come from multiple directions and the need to escape it or shut it down washes over me like Niagra Falls. I just. . .can't. Within two minutes one night one kid was asking me, politely, to staple a hand-crafted book, one kid was screaming to get out of the bath, one kid stood up at the table and knocked a full glass of water onto the floor and the final kid was standing at the stove next to a hot pot of cooking chicken, demanding to make popcorn. And that wasn't even a time that I lost my shit. Oh wait, that's a lie. I didn't lose it in that moment but a few minutes later as I carried the crying child from the bathtub (after being told three times that said child needed the dinosaur towel! The dinosaur towel!) I stated fiercely "The effing crying is making me want to tear my head off." Except I didn't say effing.

This tornado of kids is teaching me so much. One of the reasons I don't write much about them individually or specifically here is because I want to protect their privacy. The other huge reason is that the experience of becoming their mother affects me so intensely that I'm processing and learning and healing myself and that's what I want to write about.