Is this a normal reaction?
TW mention of (potential) cancer. Take care of yourself.
Here’s an issue I have: I’m aware that I sometimes react to things in an oversized way. I’m better than I was, but there are times when I’ll catch myself assuming something is wrong when my partner seems a little quiet, or if I don’t hear from my friends in a few days. I’ll jump to conclusions and then have to talk myself down.
I’ll prepare for the worst and hope for the best, sometimes to my detriment. Sometimes this works: I forked out for the covid vaccine, and now I’ve been to a couple of events where people have subsequently caught covid and have been fine (I still mask, but I can’t do that while eating, alas).
Sometimes it means I’m working myself to the bone to manage other people’s feelings, or I’ll take the brunt of work instead of asking for help, lest I annoy them or be a burden.
This means that sometimes I’ll sit and wonder ‘is my reaction normal?’. It’s not really healthy. What is a ‘normal’ reaction? If I decide my reaction isn’t normal, what then? I try to ignore my feelings because they’re abnormal? I try to feel a normal way?
There is power in knowing that your anxiety or depression is lying to you, absolutely. Reminding yourself of that is a good way of breaking out of a downward spiral that you can talk yourself out of or short circuit.
However, wondering if my reaction is normal is me wondering if I’m ‘allowed’ to feel the way that I do. If this feeling is normal, then it’s okay for me to give it space, if not, then I shouldn’t and I should figure out how else I should feel instead.
It’s an old instinct, one from back when I wasn’t in therapy and wasn’t healing. I knew some of my reactions were off, but I didn’t know why, or how to handle them, so I tried to measure my feelings against a yardstick of ‘normal people’. It was also because those feelings were so big, and I didn’t trust that I could bear them. So let’s focus on if it’s normal, and we can dismiss them as not normal, and that’s a lot easier in the short term.
Now I try to accept my feelings regardless of how valid I think they are, sit with them, and move through them. For me, they tend to have roots somewhere, and investigating that can be useful. Some of them I know well, and can talk myself down and out of them pretty instinctively. It’s not constant navel gazing, more like checking in with myself, and adjusting if I need to. Sometimes it is a ‘I need to walk or write this out’ or I need to distract myself a bit. Sometimes I need to talk it out in therapy. Sometimes it’s just an acknowledgement, giving myself a minute, and then moving on with my day.
It’s been a while since I’ve asked myself if my feelings were normal, but I have caught myself doing it a few times in the past few weeks. It’s both surprising and not surprising. On the one hand, I have worked hard to move into more healthy coping mechanisms and I have plenty of tools in my backpack to deal with things like this.
On the other, this is a new situation for me, and sometimes when life throws something new at you, with a lot of things outside your control, old habits will come back up to the surface, because your brain will try all sorts to cope with new situations.
I’m having surgery in 7 days (at the time of publishing). It’s a hemithyroidectomy, so half of my thyroid is being removed as there’s a nodule. The biopsy came back as indeterminate for whether it’s cancerous or not, so it’s being removed. I fully expect to be fine, the ultrasound was all clear apart from it being quite large, so I’m not worrying about that (yet). (Is that normal?)
I spent a chunk of last week in waiting mode, waiting for a surgery date to come through. It’s now come through to be 6th November (it was originally the 14th but they want it sooner rather than later, just in case).
Suddenly I have things I need to do and not a lot of time to do them in. Trying to prioritise and balance is an issue, but I’m working through it.
I know that my instinct to do a whole bunch of things in advance is a double edged sword. I work well in advance. I feel better knowing I can take time off if I need to without being too disruptive (for example, I have next week’s newsetter and the next two podcast episodes almost ready to go, which is making this period much less stressful).
On the other hand, I will work on things to avoid sitting with my feelings. I will exhaust myself doing things I can control, to avoid thinking about what I can’t control.
If I focus on batch cooking a week’s worth of meals, I’ll have less time to think about how I’ve never had surgery before, and I have no idea how I’ll react to the anaesthetic.
If I deep clean the house, I won’t think about how recovery will affect my learning, my work, my content.
If I edit all my unedited episodes, I won’t think about what comes after surgery, which could be nothing or something, depending on what comes out of the next lot of tests.
So I’ve made a realistic list of things to get done before next Wednesday:
Make sure my bed sheets are clean for the day I’m discharged, and my room is clean and recovery ready
Batch cook a few meals and buy some soup
Do the last little bit of work for my podcast so the next two episodes are ready to go
Schedule some social media
This feels like enough to keep me busy and not sitting around aimlessly, but not so busy that I’ll not be able to sit with my feelings as and when they arise.
(I feel the need to point out that I already have a list of films, games loaded on my switch, a healthy pile of books, and a crafting project to keep me occupied and resting once I’m out of surgery 😅)
All this to say, I’m having a lot of feelings at the moment! I’m managing them, feeling them, honouring them most of the time. I’m gonna be inconsistent on the internet for a couple of weeks while I recover from surgery/figure out what’s going on with my thyroid.
This and last week’s newsletter have mostly functioned as spaces for me to work out some feelings and plans, and reflect on how I’m doing. I hope you find something helpful in them, or some shared experience or something.
As my paid readers, your support means the world to me, and I appreciate your readership even more.