My stomach has been the worst it’s been since before my gallbladder surgery.

I've been crying on and off for days. I'm exhausted in a way that sleep can’t fix. The kind of exhausted where your whole body feels like a rag that's been through the spin cycle one too many times. Nothing is clinically wrong, as far as WebMD and my complete lack of insurance know. This is just what happens when you let stress live in your body long enough without evicting it.

I'm done. Not with the hard stuff. I don't have that option right now. But done feeling like this. Done letting the spiral run the show. Because I realized it wasn't just making me miserable anymore. It was making me sick.

The stress wasn't helping me survive my circumstances. It was making it harder to climb out of them.

Emotions vs. The Feature-Length Film

There's a difference between feeling an emotion and building an entire docuseries around it. Feeling the emotion is necessary. It's healthy. You have to let it move through you, or it parks itself in your stomach, your back, or your neck, starts ordering delivery, and refuses to leave.

But the story you build around the emotion, that's optional. Unfortunately, after the strain of months of unemployment, that’s where my brain had started to go.

Here's what it looks like in practice:

·       The Fact: I found out I didn't get a job I really needed.

·       My Brain's Adaptation: "I didn't get the job. What’s wrong with me? Why does this keep happening? Why can’t I seal the deal? Nobody's helping me. Nobody's showing up. What's wrong with me that nobody wants to help? Does anybody even like me? Why isn't anything working?"

None of those conclusions follow from "I didn't get the job." I added every single one of them. The job rejection was real. Everything after it was a story I told myself so convincingly that my nervous system believed it and responded accordingly.

Here is the incredibly boring, undramatic truth about why I most likely didn't get that job: I came through a recruiting agency (which costs employers a premium), and I live in another city. They likely found someone local who could start immediately, saved them a fee, and was also qualified. They went with the practical choice. That's it. That's the whole story. It has nothing to do with my worth, my likability, or whether anyone cares about me.

But my brain didn't go there first. It went straight to the spiral.

The Unmedicated High-Wire Act

I've also been coming off my anxiety medication this past week. Because I currently have no insurance, and my bank account views "out-of-pocket doctor visits" as a hilarious joke. I’ve been managing the taper carefully and watching myself like a hawk. I expected it to be difficult.

Strangely, it hasn't been. And I think I know why.

The healing work I’ve been doing over the last few years has built something solid inside me. The medication helped hold it up for a while, but the foundation was already there. (Disclaimer: Medication is just fine, sometimes necessary, and there is zero shame in it.) But for me, right now, the foundation is holding. Which is frankly a miracle given the current external dumpster fire.

But it means I have to be more intentional. I have to catch the spiral before it picks up speed, so I don’t get caught up in it.

The "Boring Reason" Protocol

When something hard happens now, I’m trying a new protocol:

I’m also accepting that my body and my emotions are roommates who share a checking account. I can’t feed my body garbage and expect my emotional bank account not to overdraw. I need sun. I need sleep. I need my nightly Epsom salt baths, or a warm shower when I have a roommate who has the only bathroom with a tub. Small things that tell my nervous system: you're okay, you're being taken care of, you don't have to stay on high alert.

And, of course, I have Sugarplum.

My cat acts as my personal security guard, waiting outside the bathroom door. When I’m getting dressed, she shoves her little toy ball under the crack, and we play a high-stakes game of door hockey. I kick it, she blocks it. She has the reflexes of an NHL goalie and the attitude of a tiny princess. It’s difficult to maintain a tragic existential crisis when a 10-pound furball is aggressively outplaying you in slippers. Laughing is the fastest way to tell my body, "Hey, the emergency is over. Stand down."

The Moral of the Story

I’m not telling you to toxic-positivity your way through life. Feel everything. Feel it loudly if you need to.

But once the wave passes, remember that you get to choose what happens next. You can follow the spiral down into the dark abyss of self-doubt, or you can look at the boring facts, play some door hockey with your Sugarplum equivalent, and treat yourself like someone who actually deserves a little kindness.

The spiral is a terrible screenwriter anyway. You felt what you needed to feel. That's enough. You don't have to option the movie rights.

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