What NOT to say to yourself when trying to stay calm
There I was, laying facedown on my front lawn and minding my business when suddenly I heard my husband’s car pull slowly into the driveway and stop a few feet away from my head.
“What are you doing now?” Mr. Van Geffen said, smirking through the car window as I earthed peacefully.
Instinctively embarrassed to be observed relaxing mid-day, I replied tersely, “I am calming down my body, so when they arrive, my biometrics will be super healthy.” We were about to have a home visit from a mobile nurse to give me lab tests that would be used to determine life insurance rates (lower stress means lower insurance rates we will have to pay).
He laughed in that Ricky Ricardo ‘Oh Lucy, you’re so silly’ way and said with great patriarchal authority: “There is nothing you can do on this grass that will change the results of your health screening in 20 minutes.”
The hubris! The Man-audacity! Now it was on…
Once the medical professional arrived and finished taking blood samples, she put the blood pressure cuff on me, squeezing and releasing to measure effectively. My blood pressure was a healthy 98/58! She took it twice just to be sure. (FYI: it’s the lower number that dictates how high your blood pressure is, and 58 is LOW.)
After this, I offered her a Topo Chico and asked if she might be willing to take my blood pressure one more time, but not record the results. I wanted to show my husband that we have more control than he thinks on our stress levels.
She agreed, and I intentionally descended into the dark thoughts that all of us have access to. I told myself phrases like:
“I can never get done what I need to do at work and in this family."
"The needs in front of me are impossible to fill."
"My children don’t respect me."
"I have no real friends and one cares about me.”
For 30 seconds, I clenched my chest and screamed these thoughts inside my brain.The nurse’s eyes grew big as the dial spun upwards on the gauge, landing at a stressed out level of 120/90.
Side note: Repeated measurements of 90 for your diastolic pressure can get you diagnosed with high blood pressure, and means medication is needed to avoid a heart attack.
With my thoughts alone, I had worked my body into a high blood pressure state.
I wish I could be with you now to shake your shoulders and shout indignantly, “Do you know what this means??”
This is further proof that what you say to yourself is in itself a causal indicator of how calm you will be able to stay. That, regardless of whether your child is refusing to get into their car seat, or has disobeyed your limit and driven off with the car without asking, your inner dialogue determines what kind of parent you will show up as.
Your homework: Notice and bring attention to the sensations in your body when you speak kindly to yourself versus when you allow your inner critic to narrate your experience. That critic of yours creates stress you don’t need!
I give more explicitly instructions for getting to Calm here in this hour long prerecorded class.
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In Case You Missed It
Last week on Instagram, we explored textual ethics across generations and I assigned a little Enneagram-themed homework!
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