metaphortunate son (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
metaphortunate) wrote2013-09-19 10:58 am
metaphortunate) wrote2013-09-19 10:58 am
Entry tags:
courage
Well, I'm officially past my due date. Still waiting.
And it turns out I'm fucking terrified of labor. I hadn't really expected that, because I wasn't last time. In fact, I hadn't really realized it, until I discovered I was putting off going to bed, because when I do, I lie there in the dark and wonder if tonight will be the night the contractions start getting more intense, and silently freak the fuck out; and also, I noticed that I've been getting more and more freaked out about going to my prenatal appointments, until I was almost kind of lightheaded with fear as I walked into the last one, even though Mr. E got to go with me. Because that was how labor started last time: I went to a routine prenatal appointment, and they got very concerned faces, and then started throwing around words like "pre-eclampsia" and "seizure", and that segued smoothly into the worst weekend of my life.
When I told my mom I was pregnant with Hypo she kind of freaked out. I didn't. I had optimism for some reason, figured it had a good chance of all being fine. For the record, it is fine so far. Late in the pregnancy now and blood pressure remains normal for me, which is low in general. But I'm doing all my freaking out now. It's probably a good thing that I will not get much of a choice about when this baby comes out because otherwise there is a chance that I would end up internally dragging around a third grader.
But I don't have much of a choice. So I will have to be brave.
[This is where I would go find a Courage Wolf macro and include it, except that the last time I image Googled "Courage Wolf", which I did to try to psych myself up for something, I mostly got a whole lot of macros encouraging men to rape women. So I don't Google "Courage Wolf" anymore, because I am trying to integraterosefox's excellent "Don't make yourself sad" dictum into my life. Thanks for simultaneously making everything possible and impossible, internets!]
So I've been thinking about courage lately, partly because of being pregnant and facing labor, partly because ofthefourthvine's post about podfic permissions. Because so much of it was about anxiety and things that you could do to reduce your own or someone else's anxiety.
[Okay it is vital that I be REALLY REALLY CLEAR here that I am not, at any point in this post, at all telling anyone else what to do. This stuff started me thinking about ME and how I want MYSELF to behave. Maybe that's narcissism; I like to think of it as minding my own business.]
Now I'm totally in favor of reducing anxiety. I had really bad anxiety for a long time, as part of the classic anxiety-depression cocktail, and it just totally fucks with you in ways that are hard to explain or even believe if you've never dealt with it yourself. It makes everything so hard. I remember one particularly awful day when I spent I am not even going to tell you how long, because I am ashamed, trying to work up the nerve to leave the house and go to Walgreens. Chris Pureka wrote in "So it Goes": now just pouring a glass of water is like trying to move boulders with your breath.
That about sums it up. You're trying. Nothing's going anywhere. The tools you have are simply inadequate for the job.
And when I had that anxiety, trying to just sack up and power on through was worse than counterproductive. If I wanted to beat myself up about how something should be trivially easy and why couldn't I just do it, well that option was available to me all day long. If I wanted to actually get a thing done, then it was time to turn to options that would actually work, CBT techniques and the like. (Not that CBT. The other one. You perverts.) The key to getting things done when you have anxiety is absolutely to reduce the anxiety, to chip down the barrier to entry.
But I don't have that kind of anxiety anymore. (Thank you, Science!) Now I have fears, about things, especially social things, which annoy me, because I used to be considered a very brave person. I would certainly not consider myself that anymore. That bugs me. I think being brave was good. I think I had more fun. I would like to get back to being brave. And I'm not sure how. And I think at this point, reducing the anxiety is not the way, because the goal is not really to get the things done; things are already getting done. The goal is…hard to define, even. To change the way I feel about the things? What does it mean to be brave? How do you learn to be braver? What are you brave about? Are you brave?
And it turns out I'm fucking terrified of labor. I hadn't really expected that, because I wasn't last time. In fact, I hadn't really realized it, until I discovered I was putting off going to bed, because when I do, I lie there in the dark and wonder if tonight will be the night the contractions start getting more intense, and silently freak the fuck out; and also, I noticed that I've been getting more and more freaked out about going to my prenatal appointments, until I was almost kind of lightheaded with fear as I walked into the last one, even though Mr. E got to go with me. Because that was how labor started last time: I went to a routine prenatal appointment, and they got very concerned faces, and then started throwing around words like "pre-eclampsia" and "seizure", and that segued smoothly into the worst weekend of my life.
When I told my mom I was pregnant with Hypo she kind of freaked out. I didn't. I had optimism for some reason, figured it had a good chance of all being fine. For the record, it is fine so far. Late in the pregnancy now and blood pressure remains normal for me, which is low in general. But I'm doing all my freaking out now. It's probably a good thing that I will not get much of a choice about when this baby comes out because otherwise there is a chance that I would end up internally dragging around a third grader.
But I don't have much of a choice. So I will have to be brave.
[This is where I would go find a Courage Wolf macro and include it, except that the last time I image Googled "Courage Wolf", which I did to try to psych myself up for something, I mostly got a whole lot of macros encouraging men to rape women. So I don't Google "Courage Wolf" anymore, because I am trying to integrate
rosefox's excellent "Don't make yourself sad" dictum into my life. Thanks for simultaneously making everything possible and impossible, internets!]So I've been thinking about courage lately, partly because of being pregnant and facing labor, partly because of
thefourthvine's post about podfic permissions. Because so much of it was about anxiety and things that you could do to reduce your own or someone else's anxiety.[Okay it is vital that I be REALLY REALLY CLEAR here that I am not, at any point in this post, at all telling anyone else what to do. This stuff started me thinking about ME and how I want MYSELF to behave. Maybe that's narcissism; I like to think of it as minding my own business.]
Now I'm totally in favor of reducing anxiety. I had really bad anxiety for a long time, as part of the classic anxiety-depression cocktail, and it just totally fucks with you in ways that are hard to explain or even believe if you've never dealt with it yourself. It makes everything so hard. I remember one particularly awful day when I spent I am not even going to tell you how long, because I am ashamed, trying to work up the nerve to leave the house and go to Walgreens. Chris Pureka wrote in "So it Goes": now just pouring a glass of water is like trying to move boulders with your breath.
That about sums it up. You're trying. Nothing's going anywhere. The tools you have are simply inadequate for the job.
And when I had that anxiety, trying to just sack up and power on through was worse than counterproductive. If I wanted to beat myself up about how something should be trivially easy and why couldn't I just do it, well that option was available to me all day long. If I wanted to actually get a thing done, then it was time to turn to options that would actually work, CBT techniques and the like. (Not that CBT. The other one. You perverts.) The key to getting things done when you have anxiety is absolutely to reduce the anxiety, to chip down the barrier to entry.
But I don't have that kind of anxiety anymore. (Thank you, Science!) Now I have fears, about things, especially social things, which annoy me, because I used to be considered a very brave person. I would certainly not consider myself that anymore. That bugs me. I think being brave was good. I think I had more fun. I would like to get back to being brave. And I'm not sure how. And I think at this point, reducing the anxiety is not the way, because the goal is not really to get the things done; things are already getting done. The goal is…hard to define, even. To change the way I feel about the things? What does it mean to be brave? How do you learn to be braver? What are you brave about? Are you brave?
no subject
Fear is unpleasant, and personally I have a very low tolerance for unpleasantness, so when I'm afraid of something I normally do it as soon as possible (unless it's breaking up with someone -- I have dragged that shit out way longer than necessary). And it probably feels like you don't have any control over how long you'll feel afraid, like all you can do is wait. But since you're past your due date, at a certain point the medical people are going to start asking you about inducing labor. So if you want to take the wolf by the ears, you could choose to do that, and then you will know almost exactly when you can stop being afraid. (IANAD and I am not advocating this, just saying it's an option.)
IMO, people who struggle with depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses are colossally brave. They have to be to even get out of bed in the morning. And mothers are colossally brave, too, taking huge risks with their bodies and their emotions and their lives. This is not small stuff. I consider myself a very brave person (my name means "courage"), but I will never be as brave as you.
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no subject