swimming toward the shark

I recently discovered a new podcast called “Meditative Story”.  It launched in 2019, so I decided I would start listening to it from the very first episode and work my way forward.  After the first listen, I was hooked.  Each episode features a different author who shares a pivotal moment in their life that essentially changed everything.  The show’s host, Rohan Gunnatillake (“Guna-till-a-kuh”) gently pauses the stories periodically to share mindfulness prompts that help root you in the present moment and bring the story to life in a whole new way.  The stories usually last about 10-15 minutes, and then Rohan closes each episode out with a guided meditation and, what he calls, a “mindfulness micro step” that he encourages you to try and incorporate into your day.

Sidebar: No, this is not a paid promotion… although I admit it’s starting to sound like one.  I’m just a sucker for good stories.

Yesterday I was out for a walk with my dog and put on an episode.  This particular one was titled “Creating space to stand in truth”, told by Dr. Susan David, a psychologist and author from South Africa.  It’s episode 21 from the 2019 season, or in other words, not an episode I picked on purpose.  It just happened to be the next one in line.  Yet I knew about three minutes in that, while I wanted to stop listening, I simply couldn’t.

It was one of those rare moments in life.  I’ll do my best to describe it, and maybe you’ve ever experienced something similar.

Susan’s podcast story begins in her happy, South African childhood.  When she turns six years old, something shifts and she starts being preoccupied, basically obsessed, with death. She explained from a psychological perspective that six is around the age kids first realize that everything alive must one day die.  She said her obsession would kick in for her every night at bedtime.

I felt my gut tighten, but I kept walking.

She described the most wonderfully, comforting bedtime ritual – drinking hot cocoa with her parents, and then getting carried tenderly to her clean, soft bed.  She would nestle in and receive good night wishes and affection from her parents, which left her feeling completely at ease.  But as soon as her parents left her room, and she started hearing them talking in the other room, she would be overcome with fear that one of them would die, or that one of them was already dead at that very moment.

Susan would cry out to her parents trying to sound calm, “Goodnight Mum!  Goodnight Dad!”  And they would both answer back “Goodnight Susan”, and she would relax.  Then a few minutes later she would feel the panic begin again, and she would cry out once more.  This time her parents would reply somewhat frustrated and remind her that it was time for her to go to sleep.

I felt the sidewalk shift under my feet – not literally, but as a strong sensation.  Like I was suddenly walking across the deck of a rocking boat with unsteady sea legs.  If this had been the first (or second or tenth or fiftieth) time this had happened, the sensation would have likely sent me into a panic attack overwhelmed by fearful thoughts that something was wrong with my brain or that I was about to pass out.  The truth is that I was diagnosed with anxiety and panic disorder more than a decade ago and didn’t start taking medication for it until about six months ago.  All this time of self-care, years of therapy, reading anything I could get my hands on and generally being obsessed with finding answers – well, it has given me a lot of time to get to know my anxiety really well.  I now recognize this shifting sensation as my form of anxiety’s signature symptom.  I now know that when it happens, it means I’ve touched on something unresolved in my psyche.  I have also learned that I shouldn’t run away from it, but rather lean toward it and see what it’s trying to teach me.

It’s almost like I feel life shift onto a new track in an unexpected direction.  Reflexively, I want to get off the train and start walking home.  Yet I somehow know that if I can just hang on and not look away, I’m bound to learn something really important.

Susan described being alone in her childhood bedroom overwhelmed by irrational fears of death, and I knew as I listened, exactly why my anxiety kept tapping my shoulder and asking me to pay attention.  The thing is, as a kid – probably around six years old, come to think of it – I started having similar troubles at bedtime.  With my head laid sideways on my pillow, I could hear my heart beating softly in my ears.  I would find myself counting my heartbeats, irrationally believing that if I fell asleep and stopped counting them that my heart would stop and I would die.

Yeah, just a little bit heavy.  Up to this point in my life, I had never heard anyone else say they, too, had this preoccupation with mortality, especially at such a young age.

In addition to my compulsive counting of heartbeats, I also dreamed extremely vividly.  When I would eventually drift off to asleep, I would often have nightmares so real and severe that my pediatrician diagnosed them as “night terrors”.  He told my parents I would eventually grow out of them.  Thankfully I didn’t have the nightmares every night, but when I did, I would wake myself up crying, usually sobbing actually.  It would take me several minutes to recover and realize that whatever bad thing happened in my dream didn’t actually happen in real life.  Sometimes I was running from someone; sometimes someone was trying to kill my family, and I was the only one who knew; sometimes I was being forced to jump out of an airplane; sometimes they were just a series of scary scenarios that made no sense at all.

When the night terrors first started, I would cry out to my parents, and they would come in and comfort me until I got quiet again.  After many, many nights of this bedtime hell, we all got tired of it.  I had begun crying the moment they left my room, so terrified of the night ahead.  My parents eventually put their foot down and stopped coming in at the sound of my cries.  I’m not sure if they thought that their attention was feeding the problem, or that they just needed to break the routine.  Either way, they eventually thought it best to let me learn to get through the nights on my own.

It was just too hard.  So I adapted.  I realized that the best thing I could do if I had a night terror was stay quiet and pull myself together.  Not so that I could go back to sleep – again, that was just too hard – but rather so I could silently sneak into my parents’ room with my sleeping bag and spend the rest of the night on the floor next to their bed, comforted by the sound of their breathing.  I would usually get in trouble, especially if Dad was first to see me in the morning.  If Mom woke up first and felt my sleeping bag’s slick rayon under her bare feet, she would usually gently nudge me awake and help me carry my stuff back to my room before my dad woke up.  But not always.  She wasn’t big on keeping secrets from my father.  Regardless, I would always get a pep talk back in my room about knowing that I was a big girl and that I had to learn to sleep in my own bed and that I shouldn’t come into their room without permission.

Honestly, these messages always fell on deaf ears.  It was morning, and all was well.  I was so grateful to be awake and at the start of a new day. I knew I had many hours ahead before night would be back. I just wanted to get on with it, happy to agree with my parents well-intentioned lectures.  Whatever I needed to agree to so I could get outside and play and be a kid, I was willing to do it.

I don’t know what caused me to obsess about my heartbeat or to have night terrors.  I used to think maybe it was because my parents let me watch “Pet Cemetery” when I was barely old enough to talk, plopping me down in front of the TV with my cousins at a family Christmas party before going into another room with the adults.  Two of my grandparents had died when I was five years old.  Perhaps as I watched them slowly die from cancer and then was eventually told they had gone to heaven, maybe I asked for more specifics about their last moments on earth, and maybe I was told their hearts just eventually stopped beating or that they had slipped away peacefully in their sleep. Perhaps I saw something on TV or a mean kid said something upsetting about death.  Or perhaps it just happened.  I really don’t know.  But I was plagued by night terrors for years.  I eventually outgrew them by about age 10, but to this day, they still come around once in a blue moon.  Thankfully, I can now separate the dreams from reality much more quickly.

According to Susan, it was likely just part of my growing-up experience.  As I listened to her all-too-familiar story, I tried to just keep walking and ignore the rising anxiety in my core.  Anyone who has battled anxiety knows that this is not a smart move.  Pushing through may postpone the anxiety or weaken it temporarily, but it will always comes back stronger and stronger each time until it you finally acknowledge it properly.  This is a truth I know all too well, but because I’m human and don’t always do the right thing, I chose to ignore the anxiety and kept walking.

As Susan’s story continued, my anxiety kept tapping harder and harder, until I could feel a full-blown anxiety attack beginning to bloom. I kept walking and smiling at passersby determined to push through it, but it only got worse.  I was just about to sit down, pretend to be interested in something on my phone, give in and let it run its course.

Just then, Rohan popped in with a meditative prompt.  Honestly, it was like his words were directed at me, meant specifically for me.  He said something to the effect of, “This story may be bringing up some difficult things for you, and that’s okay.  Take time to breathe and reflect before we move on.  Even take a moment to pause the podcast if you like.”

And with Rohan’s permission, I did just that.  I paused the podcast and walked for another five minutes with my headphones off and around my neck.  I listened to the seagulls, the traffic, the leaves crunching underfoot, Fischer softly panting as we kept moving.  When I had regained my calm, I thought to myself, I’m going to finish this episode later, turn around early and start walking back home.  It’s all just a little too much for me right now.

I put my headphones back on and held down the Bluetooth button to prompt a Siri request on my iPhone.  I wanted to ask her to play a song from my workout playlist, but my phone kept going right back to the podcast.  I took my workout sleeve off my arm, unzipped it, pulled out my phone and manually navigated to my music library.  This time, the app would not open.  I tried the double-click, home-button trick and swiped up to exit out of all my open apps.  I again tapped on the music app, but nothing.  It just wouldn’t load.  All signs were telling me to finish the podcast.  Not later, but right then.  I could feel the momentum, and I knew it had something important to teach me, whether I was ready or not.  I took a deep breath and resumed the story.

Young Susan was now in her parents’ room, snuggled between them, and confessing to them that she was afraid if she went to sleep that one of them would die.  I admired how specific and forthcoming she was, confessing such an embarrassing truth to her mom and dad that that would obviously not understand.

Susan said she honestly expected them to respond to her explanation with something along the lines of “it’s okay”, “we’re not going anywhere”, “we’ll be right here when you wake up tomorrow”.  But to her surprise, they didn’t.  Her father told her that he would die one day.  And so would her mom.  And so would she.  That they weren’t superhuman people who would live forever.  That he understood that it was scary to think about.  Even for him sometimes.  But he said that death was one of the greatest reminders to enjoy life and appreciate those you love.

Listening to this exchange, I found myself thinking that this was a super grownup message for a six-year-old to hear, telling her that her worst fears would eventually happen.  I instinctively wanted to shield her young ears from such a difficult truth.

Susan continued in her narration and said that she was so grateful to her father for teaching her at such a young age that everything wasn’t always okay.  Life could be scary, and that what was okay was to be honest about that.  She said he taught her that it was important to create space for your feelings and acknowledge them.  That courage wasn’t living without fear, but rather moving forward with life despite the fear.  This moment with her parents and her father sharing his own vulnerabilities changed Susan’s entire perspective.

She then introduced the word, Sawubona – an African word that in Zulu means “I see you, I value you, and you are important to me.” In these fearful moments in her parents’ bed, her father had truly seen her and acknowledged her emotions and validated that what she was feeling was, indeed, okay.

When Susan grew up, she became a psychiatrist and then a parent herself.  When it came time to take her infant son for his first vaccines, she wasn’t prepared for the sudden shift in his happy mood to sheer terror as he felt the sting of the shots. She tried to comfort her screaming baby by instinctively telling him “it’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay.”  She was surprised when the pediatrician touched her arm and said something to the effect of, “Susan, it’s not okay.  He’s in pain and he can’t express himself to you and what he’s feeling other than to cry.”  The doctor told her there would be days when something that had always made him happy would suddenly make him sad.  Her son wouldn’t know why, and neither would she as his mother.  Some feelings were unexplainable, but they, too, needed to be acknowledged.

When she got home, Susan bemoaned to her husband that she was a psychiatrist with an advanced degree in understanding human emotion, and here she was trying to invalidate their baby’s feelings the first chance she got.  Her husband listened patiently to her emotional rant until she got it all out.  He then smiled and told her, simply, “it’s okay.”  And they both laughed.  And I did, too.

The story was now over, and Rohan came in to do the closing meditation, focusing on the meaning of Sawubona, “I see you”.  By this point, I was back in front of my building, standing in the shade of a tree to listen to the end of the episode.  Rohan kept repeating “I see you” followed by silence, and then he asked, “What’s coming up for you? What did you see?  How did you feel?”

In my mind’s eye, I saw a young girl – and then recognized her to be me at around the age of six, afraid and alone in her bedroom, desperate to be understood and to be okay.  Before this moment, I knew that my anxiety needed to be acknowledged and addressed, and that eventually I would understand the source of it in the first place.  I had talked with my therapist – make that therapists – about the night terrors and the death of my grandparents, and countless other honest moments, trying desperately to identify the cause.  I had learned that all emotions should be acknowledged – even the hard ones – but I was only applying it to my current self.  Susan’s story showed me that I needed to dig a little deeper and apply the same truth to my younger self as well, for it was her feelings that had yet to be acknowledged.

See, the difference between Susan’s story and mine is that my well-meaning parents kept telling me there was nothing to be afraid of.  As I grew older, my well-meaning spouse kept telling me there was nothing to be afraid of.  Well-intentioned as they were, their dismissive message only made me think that something was wrong with me.  That my feelings were bad.  That I needed to stifle them and carry on.

I could now, in this moment, clearly see that my anxiety had stemmed from normal childhood fears that were dismissed, unacknowledged, stifled, and therefore fed and nourished until they grew into something exceptionally powerful and eventually diagnosable.  This realization seemed to instantly untangle a knot in my psyche.  This simple truth of creating space for my feelings – all feelings, past and present – had eluded me for so many years, and it had now finally shown up clear as day.

The next time Rohan said “I see you”, it’s like I was suddenly saying to the little girl in my head what I wished someone had said to me all those years ago.

Hi Sweetheart. I understand.  Everything is not okay right now because you are very much afraid.  But it is okay to be afraid.  The unknowns of life are scary, for all of us.  You are not alone.  Everyone deals with fear from time to time, and we go on living with it.  Everyone realizes that one day they will die, and it’s natural for that to sound scary. You’re so young and healthy.  You’re a little girl.  Dying doesn’t make sense to you.  That is what is okay.  Death is the greatest of the unknowns and, therefore, is the greatest fear of all for nearly everyone at some point. Think about it this way.  If everything that is alive must die, then death is a part of life, right?  And why would God make something that all of his children, every plant, every cloud, every animal, and every living thing have to go through a scary, bad thing to be feared?  The truth is I don’t think he would.  I think what makes it scary is that no one who is dead right now can come back and tell us what it’s like. So it feels unnatural because it’s so unknown and so unexplained.  But death is completely natural.  It also does something really beautiful if you think about it.  It makes us appreciate our lives so much more and enjoy our families, our friends, our beautiful planet, and all the things that make us smile.  That makes death a gift.  Knowing that all of this wonder and love and happiness during our earthly lives won’t last forever.  When we know that, we learn to savor life.  And you have many, many years of life ahead to enjoy, experience and savor.  While we’re at it, let’s celebrate that powerful imagination of yours that will, no doubt, take you far in life.

Sweetheart, I see you – in all your fear and confusion and in all your beauty and wonder. I value you, and you are important to me.

I now forgive my parents for not having known these words to speak to me.  For not having the intellectual capacity and life experiences to formulate this advice at that time in our lives.  I forgive them for their limitations.

I am grateful for their love and for parenting me the best they knew how.  I am grateful that I have now had – and will continue to have – experiences they haven’t.  I am grateful that I am intellectually curious and have access to literature, professors and podcasts they know nothing about.

I am grateful to Dr. Susan David for sharing her story.  And I am grateful to her father for showing me the importance of creating space for my feelings.  All of them.  Then and now.

Sawubona.