I’m stuck in waiting mode.
Waiting mode is something that can come with neurodivergence, anxiety, depression, PTSD etc.
It occurs when waiting for something to happen, normally an appointment or event that’s going to happen at a specific time. It becomes difficult to impossible to get anything done in the intervening time.
For example:
I have an appointment at 2pm. It’s currently 10am. I cannot possibly do anything in this time in between.
Reasons why it’s hard to do anything in between:
What if it takes too long and I don’t finish it?
What if I get so distracted I’m late for my appointment?
If you think about it, it’ll take 30 minutes to get there, so I need to leave at 1:00, so I need to start getting ready to leave at 12:30, and I need to eat lunch before then, so I need to start food at 11:30, so I only really have 90 minutes to do anything anyway.
Result: Sitting and doing nothing while being anxious about doing nothing.
People have described it as similar to rumination, and I agree. Rumination involves repetitive thinking or dwelling on negative situations, or feelings.
Rumination is similar to waiting mode, except you’re focused entirely on the appointment, and the countdown until you have to go to said appointment. This also applies to doing things you want to do, like hanging out with friends. It’s like you need to be hyper aware that you are going to be doing A Thing at a future time and if you stop being aware, things will go wrong in some way.
It’s stressful and unhelpful. I’m pretty good at dealing with it by now, and I usually can find small tasks to fill the space up without stressing myself out too much (cleaning, admin, or other small, discrete tasks are good for managing that time and getting a little dopamine hit from being productive).
Grounding myself is another good step, reminding myself to live in the present for a bit, rather than the future.
Knowing I have things planned out means I can pull my mind back to the present and focus on something in front of me, even if just for a few minutes, can help break the cycle.
Where my current mechanisms fall apart is when I don’t know when the thing I need to do will happen. The concept of knowing something will happen that will require my action at some point in the near future but I’m not sure when is really difficult for me to manage. I’m okay with long term uncertainty, but short term is difficult.
This is my life at the moment. I need to have surgery, and it’s going to be happening within the next month or so.
However, I’m still waiting for my date, which should be here in the next week or two from the date of this being published.
I know I’ll need to take two weeks off to recover after surgery, but I don’t know when those two weeks will be yet.
So I’m in this weird space of knowing a big disruptive thing will happen at some point but being unable to really prepare for it. I can’t let people know when I’ll be unavailable. I don’t know how much of my therapy course it will affect. I’m just left with this urge to prepare but nowhere to put it.
This makes it difficult to do anything. Ideally, I’d be getting ahead of what I can, so I’m ready for whenever I need to drop work for a bit, so I still have newsletters, or podcasts, and social media posts scheduled to go. I can prep food for recovery and freeze it. I can make sure my house is clean so my recovery environment is relaxing.
However, I don’t know when I’ll be needing all of this. Do I put work in now to write a month’s worth of newsletters, only to find out that they’ll have run out the day I go in for surgery? Is it best to pace myself now and throw myself into things fully when I do have a date so I have a deadline to focus on? Does it even matter and I should just do it all anyway?
Here’s what I have been doing:
Grounding myself regularly, especially when I notice my brain living too much in the future
I can only control so much, and making sure I’m existing in the present is one way of reducing my stress levels
Taking joy in doing things for future me, and making sure I’ll have good things while I’m recovering
I’m doing this work because I want to make my recovery as smooth and pleasant as possible.
Knowing that being rested and healthy will help recovery
Going into surgery worn out will not help my recovery
Here’s what I’m trying to do:
Focus on things in list of ‘how soon I definitely know I need to do them’ (regular content, homework, normal housework)
Brain dumping is a good way of making my to do list visible, and then I can organise by priority, which helps my brain
Realise I don’t have to do this all alone, my partner and friends can help
I can lean on people! People will be happy to help me, as I am happy to help them
Do what I can. Things that don’t get done won’t get done, and that’s okay
Similar to grounding, sometimes you have to let go of a vision (a fully deep cleaned house! 10 days worth of nutritionally balanced meals in the freezer!). It’s okay if I get a burger delivered at some point.
Is this working? Mostly? Sort of? There's definitely still times where I’m frustrated, torn between wanting to do something and not knowing what to do. It’s like I have no idea which is the right decision, and there isn’t really a wrong one, so it’s not an easy decision to make.
You’d think them all being some level of right would mean I could do anything, and that would make sense, but that’s not how my trauma brain works with ambiguity. I’m currently working on learning to trust myself more in my personal counselling, and this is a good test of that.
I’m better than I was, I’m handling all of this so much better than I would have 4, 5, 6 years ago. I’m proud of how I’m handling it all, and how I will continue to handle it moving forward. It’s just right now, it’s a little sucky.
Oh, and programming note: I’m going to be out for surgery! I’m not sure how much it will affect the newsletter, you’ll know when I do 🙂
Related reading: Gentle redirection aka gentle parenting your brain
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