Think UP!

There are certain things that, when I encounter them, can trigger a panicked state that can last for days.

Did I say “days”? I meant “decades.”

Bank statements.

Performance evaluations.

Bills. Summons. Official letters.

A certain kind of guy in an expensive suit.

Deadlines.

A hostile woman older than I am who asserts a position of authority over me.

Multiple-choice tests.

A car that looks like the car of somebody who.

The thought of an interview for a job that I don’t want and am overqualified for, and that I know I will not be offered.

Anyone wearing patchwork Madras plaid clothing.

An empty classroom.

I have felt insulted when therapists have called me “high functioning.” When a therapist describes me this way, I feel she’s minimizing the level of serious-ass emotional pain I (sometimes, not always) must overcome in order to perform the small daily tasks people do to live. Which can (sometimes, not always) be immensely hard.

The way I hear it, “high-functioning” completely bypasses the Herculean struggles I’ve gone through to successfully function in the world. The success of my struggle obscures what I see as the point. Which is the obstacle: the immense obstacle I’ve had to overcome to accomplish the simplest thing. I’ve thought l might get more respect if I didn’t function so adequately. If I burst into flames. Ran off the rails. Did something clearly self-destructive.  But I don’t.

I have recently discovered a strategy to respond to this panicked reaction at checking my bank balance or at spotting a middle-aged guy in a suit in the coffee aisle.  It’s a phrase I learned from Dr. Janet Konefal, a professor at University of Miami med school, who was my therapist and my teacher.

I’ve begun deploying this strategy in situations where I’m being triggered. I’m liking the way it works.  I want to share it with you.

Before:

Me [Walks past a table where I see the letter telling me that my employer has cancelled my health insurance. Without informing me. Cancelled it retroactively. To three months ago]:

Oh, God, I’m going to be sued for all the pre-approved medical care I received before I was told — NOT by the employer who cancelled it — that my health insurance had been cancelled! And there’s nothing I can do. We’re going to lose our house. And there’s nothing I can do. My husband is going to lose his hard-earned, well-deserved retirement. And there’s nothing I can do. I have no paycheck and no way to get money.

Now, here’s that same scenario, except that in this one, I deploy my new secret weapon:

Me [Walks past a table where I see the letter telling me that my employer has cancelled my health insurance. Without informing me. Cancelled it retroactively. To three months ago]:

Well. THAT’s information.

[Keeps walking].

Deploying this weapon makes a world of difference.

“Well, THAT’s information.” I must’ve heard Janet say this a thousand times when somebody would relate some awful thing that someone in his life had done. Some unspeakably horrible response somebody had received. Something to which anyone would view a panic attack, or passing out, or jumping off a bridge to avoid remembering it, as a quite reasonable response.

Somebody [Telling a story of being physically abused by a partner]:

. . . Then he demanded I get out of the car. The passenger side door had been broken for a long time. It wouldn’t open. But he kept yelling at me to get out of his car anyway, and he punched me in the face, which is where I got this black eye. Then he grabbed onto the the driver’s side window and started kicking me. With the shoes I had bought him for his birthday.

Janet [In a businesslike, no-nonsense tone]:

Well, THAT’s information.

Let me begin to point out the genius of this response.

“Well, THAT’s information.” The person narrating the violent episode, whom we might have been thinking of as victim, instantly goes meta-. Instead of being back in the traumatic story she’s recounting, the narrator, in order to process what Janet has just said, has analyze the story, to think of it as information, completely apart from its emotional content.

Instead of reliving the experience, and re-entering its extreme emotions, the person telling this story starts thinking. Now the episode is no longer a trauma to be re-played the same way again and again; instead, it is something to be analyzed. “What kind of information can be gleaned from what I just said? Information, perhaps, about the kind of asshole I’m dating, who would kick me with shoes that I bought him? Hmmm. . . .”

“Well, THAT’s information.” This response is so quick and so subtle that you almost don’t notice it. But it flips you off the rails in a good way. It takes you out of the momentum of reliving a traumatic experience and into a completely different place, where you are analyzing it from a very objective point of view.

I hear Janet’s voice in my head: “Well, THAT’s information.” Instead of re-entering my panic at discovering a dismaying situation, I regard the letter as information. It no longer has emotional power over me. I can analyze it with a relatively calm eye.

Me [Walks past a table where I see the letter telling me that my employer has cancelled my health insurance. Without informing me. Cancelled it retroactively, from three months ago]:

Well, THAT’s information. . . . Hmmm. . . .

I guess I’ll let people know this is going on. And I’ll go online and find an insurance policy. . . . Good thing it’s January. Still open enrollment.

THANK YOU, Janet!