anxiety management

My husband is on a business trip, and my kids are all off doing their own things, and I was hungry, so I went to our favorite pizza shop this evening and got some pizza for myself, and I bought a Pepsi to go along with it. Now, if you've been listening for a while, you know that I got off caffeine and that is still true. But it was never an all or nothing thing. It was something that I would add back in on occasion, but not initially because I really wanted to break my dependence on it.

It's simply I really like it with pizza. And as I was walking out of the pizza place, taking the pizza to the car and holding the Pepsi, it's sunset and it's just this beautiful first day of August as I'm recording this. And so it's summer, I have pizza, I have Pepsi in my hand. And I instantly flashed back to how I've often enjoyed Pepsi. I've enjoyed it since I was a kid at my grandparents' house, one of my favorite places to be. I felt so safe and loved and taken care of there. I spent pretty much every weekend, every summer holiday, even when I came back from college, I would go up and sleep over there. I loved my grandparents so much and really enjoyed their home and being with them and it was such a nice, relaxed, respite.

It was a great place to be and I am very blessed that I had a really good relationship with them. And one of the things that from maybe middle school on while my grandfather was still alive was he knew I liked Pepsi. So he would buy me Doritos and Pepsi every weekend when I would come up. I love Doritos and Pepsi together and not quite as much now as I did when I was twelve, but it was something that was special and he always had those waiting for me.

So that's how I've tied all this into what I'm going to talk to you about today is I started thinking about how good it felt to be cared for with something. I liked to have my grandparents loving me and especially since I stayed there in the summertime as I'm walking out with a bottle of Pepsi in my hand and the sunset and the beautiful time where I just enjoyed being on the porch with my grandparents and summer and off of school. 

It all came together in this memory for me, this kind of montage of just beautiful memories and feeling really good in my body.

That led me to think about Mr. Rogers. So if you can tell, my brain goes through many different connections as I'm sure yours probably does too. And Mr. Rogers had this practice that he had people do and it was to take a moment and think of somebody who was really special to you, who made a difference in your life and just think about them for a moment. Right? And then I think he said something at the end like how very proud of you they would be. Or something like that. And when I first heard that several years ago, immediately it was my grandparents that I thought of immediately. They were the people that had my back. They were the people who knew what I liked. They were the people who gave me special things. Even as I am saying this right now, tears are coming to my eyes because I love them, I miss them so much, I can't wait to see them again in heaven. But right now I am like even having to swallow back because of the tears. It is a good thing though. I love remembering how they made me feel and that connection of somebody special to you and how you can reflect back on how they made you feel, who they were, what it was about them that spoke to you.

Then that tied to another connection, which is a client that I have been working with on something called a felt sense of safety. And a felt sense of safety is when in our body we can intentionally shift from the fight or flight nervous system into the rest and digest parasympathetic nervous system.

If you feel anxious or you feel overwhelmed, you can regulate yourself by thinking of something that is special to you or someone that is special to you or a feeling that you can take a snapshot of, kind of like a mental snapshot and know that you can get back there.

I want to invite you to do that today. If you have someone special in your history, as I do with my grandparents, I want you to think about who that someone special is. Maybe it was a teacher who believed in you or an aunt or an uncle or an older brother. Maybe it was your mom or your dad or your sibling. Maybe it was a parent of a friend. We all have those people that gosh if we could have been loved like that all the time consistently, there'd be like no wrong in the world. Everybody would have been loved so much.

And if you don't have that with a person, Jesus loves you unconditionally and consistently. And to be able to tap into your physical body that memory, that felt sense of safety.

So when I go back to my grandparents in the summertime, I can hear the crickets, I can feel the warm but cool breeze. It's kind of like cooler than the rest of the day but still warm because it's summer. I can smell the fresh cut grass, I can taste the iced tea, the Lipton iced tea with the lemon, all the sugar. I can hear the different sounds of the neighborhood because of where the houses were. I can hear my grandfather's voice. I can feel that feeling again.

I can even hear the refrigerator opening to get my Pepsi out. How often do I think about that though, right? I'm in my early fifties and I'm thinking back to how I felt as a teenager. I don't think about that every day, but when I stop and think about it, it is as fresh and as beautiful as it was back then, and probably even more so because I miss it so much. But I can go there and I can have this felt sense of love, provision, relaxation, support, enjoyment, rest. That's what it meant to be with my grandparents. And when I tap into those senses, it brings it up in my system as joy, as peace. Yeah, there's a little bit of sadness because I miss them so much. But overall, it's a good feeling. It's a really good feeling. It's a sentimental feeling, it's a nostalgia feeling, it's an appreciation feeling.

I don't know what that is for you. I don't know who that is for you. But I want to invite you, like Mr. Rogers did, to think about that special someone, even if it was just for a moment that you had someone who loved you the way you really needed to be loved at the right moment. Just pull on that good, good memory of being and feeling so, so loved, and notice what you hear, what you think, what you feel, what you remember. And in that memory, what do you see? What do you hear? What do you touch? What do you taste? What do you smell? Try to make that as real as possible, what it was like to be in that moment or in that time frame with that person, or those people that were so special and comforting and supportive and encouraging. And stay there until you can feel that in your body and feel the shift, the shift to the comforting state, the felt sense of safety.

And your mindset and your feelings and how you look at life and how safe the world feels, it shifts, and it becomes better. And that's a tool that you always have with you. You can always hold on to that felt sense. Take a snapshot of it. What did that memory feel like? What did that experience of being in that person's presence feel like? And if you want to, I invite you. I'm no Mr. Rogers, but I invite you to think about that special person and drop it into Instagram or the Facebook page Mental Health for Christian Women, and just tell me who that special person was and what it was that made them so special you. And tell me how it went for you. How did this exercise go? Were you able to feel it again? Because I'd love to hear who your special person was or is and how it made you feel to try this exercise.

God bless.