(Original journal entry: 2019)

This week my anxiety changed colour and shape. I am now picturing it as a beautiful, purple butterfly.

When I get really anxious or upset my chest tends to get very tight. Picture your chest being wrapped up with a bunch of thick gauze, just like a mummy. All I want to do is breathe and shift just a little to make my body feel more comfortable, but I can’t. The deeper I breathe to try and relax the more the gauze tightens and anxiety shoots up out of a crushing panic. In order to not feel so stiff and hopeless I stop moving. I stop breathing. I do not want to be constricted and be reminded of that damn gauze, so I just stop doing anything that brings attention to it. Now what? Nothing. I do absolutely nothing out of fear. Anxiety has won again.

When this happens my head begins to hurt and all thoughts start to race around at full speed. I have to force myself to breathe even though it physically hurts. In counselling sessions my psychologist reminds me to stay focused on my feelings and where I am experiencing pain in my body. That is when I become aware of the purple butterfly frantically flapping her wings and fluttering around inside the centre of my chest. She is frightened and I am scared because I don’t know how to help her escape. I feel awful because I can’t control my emotions and I am hurting this poor, innocent creature. I have managed to trap this butterfly and am offering her a tiny space with only darkness surrounding her. How do I help? What can I do?

As I reflect more on this butterfly concept, my idea begins to shift as I try to calm myself and make it more positive (and not so “doom and gloom”). I think about what I was taught at a pain clinic when first learning about living with fibromyalgia.  In a group session we were taught how our pain receptors can freak out and make our brain scream, “Danger!” at the slightest tinge of pain. The idea at the clinic was we needed to find a way to reshape our brains’ response so as to not have our bodies react in such a negative and fearful way. Every pain moment, like every anxiety experience, is different. Yes, sometimes it can be incredibly intense but each moment isn’t an all out “Danger!”. We don’t need to ring the alarm bells and cause our bodies and brains to go into total reactive chaos mode every time we get a little nervous or feel some pain increase. Question is, how do we do that?

Back in history there may have been a purpose for our bodies to react so strongly to a stimuli to protect ourselves. As an example, when I was younger I tried to make a homemade soup and added lentils. Unfortunately I also had the flu and spent the rest of the evening throwing up from being sick, however I associated the lentils to the feelings of tummy discomfort and pain. For the next couple of years I could not eat lentils without automatically feeling ill.  My brain had made the connection between lentils and being sick. It is hard to break this type of connection because of the fear that comes from feeling threatened, in this case by eating lentils I could be in a world of tummy pain after. So why would I want to allow myself to be in that type of situation? Therefore I stopped eating lentils. This is similar (in my thinking), to someone having social anxiety. There is a threat or worry of being around people so to minimize that threat you may not leave the house.

The reason for sharing the story about the lentils and the pain clinic is to show similarities between those “Danger!” signals the bain receives, like the ones it gets when we start to experience some anxiety. We make a connection to something, someone, a place or even smell, and our body reacts to it and brings on an uncomfortable,  negative response. It would be nice if  we could find a way to take a breathe and force ourselves to stop and figure out if the situation really is dangerous. Or could we pause, slow our breathing and respond more positively?

I am trying to understand that I may always have this purple butterfly inside of me and that’s okay. I am trying to see her as a gift. She is here to protect me and to let me know when life is becoming too much that I need to stop, breathe, and take a mental pause. I am to work with her and not against her. We can form a strong bond in where if I am calm, she is calm. If I am healthy then so is Ms. Butterfly. I am thankful she will be with me through the dark times and the light.  When I feel her fluttering around she makes my anxiety real. It’s not just “my anxiety”, a simple mental state that I “need to get over”. It is very real and very physical. I want to treat Ms. Butterfly with respect and love, and in return she will protect me from myself by preventing me from pushing too hard when I need to focus on taking a break.

However you find your anxiety presenting itself today, I do hope you are able to take a moment and thank your body for making you take pause, even if it feels forced. It is not pleasant and hard to accept this break but it may make it so you don’t completely crash later and take longer to recoup because of it. That is just one way I am learning to appreciate my anxiety.

Lots of love and light,

Brandy Marie