On coping.

TW: Disordered eating, relational trauma, OCD, epilepsy.

Maybe you are searching amongst the branches for what only appears in the roots.

-Rumi

The brilliance of our human spirit is that we will always find ways to cope. However helpful or destructive our behaviors might become, our bodies are built for survival and will do whatever necessary to continue moving forward.

My life has shown me that our coping behaviors are not the problems we face, but rather the symptoms of the problems we face. Maladaptive behavior like alcohol misuse, disordered eating, and codependence in relationships wreak havoc on our lives, keeping us locked in cycles of deep pain. I believe that looking for what lies beneath these behaviors, looking for what is driving the need to act in painful ways, is where our salvation lies.

In addition to asking ourselves “How are we coping,” we must also ask “Why are we coping?”

…

My mother had a debilitating form of Epilepsy. This meant that I was often her caretaker. On her “bad days,” she would have hundreds of petit mal seizures in increasing frequency and severity, leading to the crescendo of a grand mal seizure. I remember the fear of watching her lose herself again and again in her blips, anticipating the worst with crippling anxiety and hypervigilance.

I was taught never to call for help. There would be more trouble and complication if paramedics and police were involved. She could lose her driver’s license. There would be medical bills from ambulance rides and emergency room stays. She carried great shame about her condition, and we were to keep it confined to our home as much as possible.

I have a memory of one day when I was little, hearing her yell out as the seizure began, watching her fall to the ground as her body seized and shook. Running to her and fearing she would die, watching her mouth foam while her hands and face contorted. I remember putting a pillow under her head and covering her with a blanket while she slept afterward, letting out huge snoring sounds and fearing with each one that she would stop breathing and I would be alone to face her death. I remember kneeling beside her, holding vigil and wondering if she would wake up. Facing this terror alone as my mother lay unconscious on the ground, forbidden from calling for help.

I was six. I am not sure why adults were not present to intervene or why the burden of keeping a woman alive was placed on a six year old girl’s tiny shoulders, but this was my reality.

My evolution of coping:

A short time later, I remember my parents leaving the house for the afternoon. Alone at home, I found an unopened package of Oreos in the cupboard. I stood on a chair at the counter, methodically eating cookie after cookie. I remember the way each Oreo crunched and split between my teeth and I can still recall the sweetness coating the inside of my mouth. Each bite was more delicious than the last. I worked my way through one row and another and another in a blissful fog, finally coming back to the present moment when three cookies remained in the package. I felt my body fill with shame and regret, but mostly FEAR of the consequence of this action when my parents discovered the package.

The pleasure I felt in eating the cookies helped me leave the chaos and pain of my existence for one sacred moment. It all came crashing back in when I realized that there would be consequences, and they would be harsh.

Food became my gift and my curse.

When my parents came home, they were “disgusted” by how a little kid could be so gluttonous in consuming this alarming amount of cookies and so selfish for eating cookies when others clearly wanted some for themselves. My punishment was as creative as ever: I was banished to my room to write 100 times “The world does not revolve around Kelly.” This was followed by a two-week grounding filled with housework and the silent treatment.

That oughta teach her, they said.

It’s funny to think about it now- my parents created a standard of perfection and impossible bravery in our home. Then they would shame me and punish me for doing the only thing my body knew to do to bring me a modicum of relief from the burden of being a kid in that home.

I internalized their punitive voices and this became my own fiercely judgmental inner-critic. I learned to beat them to the punch. To create the pain and shame for myself to prepare myself for what might come from them.

And so it went. Coping with food became my faithful companion, my reliable support system as the world around me felt ever more unpredictable and scary.

It was excruciating to stay in the present moment, and my body was adept at finding opportunities to check out. My parents tried to combat my bingeing by shaming tactics, locking food away, and punishing me when they would discover a pile of wrappers hidden under my bed. Their efforts to curb my “disgusting” eating habits would only lead my little body to seek other coping behaviors, however maladaptive.

I remember a series of terrifying panic attacks in my bed at night at age seven or eight. I told my mom one morning, sobbing and doubled over in deep collapse over fear of going to school. She stared at me with a furrowed brow, gave me two TUMS tablets and told me that it was just a stomach ache and that I’d better get in the shower so as not to be late for school.

—-> No discussion about why I was consumed by panic and fear. I learned that the only way to survive was to shut up and buck up.

I can remember several bouts of being overwhelmed with nervousness, and compulsively licking my lips until they were red and raw. My parents were irritated by how I couldn’t just stop licking them. My dad thought it would be brilliant to spray them with the bitter apple spray we used on our dogs when they had a hotspot to keep them from licking. I pleaded with him, promising to behave myself.

—-> No discussion about what I might be worried about. I learned that obedience was more important than connection.

Around age nine, I developed a giant bald spot along the back of my head from methodically pulling my hair out, strand by strand, for months. (It wasn’t until I was about 17 that I learned this was a medical condition on the OCD spectrum called Trichotillomania). I remember my mom discovering the bald patch and taking me to the hair salon to get me a hair growth shampoo.

—-> No discussion about why I was compulsively ripping hair out of my head. I learned that my value was in my vanity, and that my feelings were of no consequence.

There was never a discussion about my mental health. There never appeared to be a concern about what was causing these maladaptive behaviors. Nobody was willing to look at why I was doing what I was doing. Nobody was capable of holding my tender heart and helping me to feel less alone. All anybody wanted from me was to stop being so weird, to get my shit together, to just BE NORMAL.

My binge disorder continued into adulthood. After my mother passed away in 2000 due to complications from epilepsy, I began binge drinking to the point of blackout several nights per week and using drugs to cope with the grief and pain of her passing. My relationships were rooted in destructive codependence, and I often abandoned myself in attempt to salvage connection with others. I was sick and resentful and completely exhausted, struggling to feel safe in a very unsafe world.

My adult life became a debilitating game of whack-a-mole. I’d try so hard to get healthier by addressing one coping mechanism at a time. I’d begin controlling my eating, and my drinking would kick into high gear. When I seemingly got one thing under control, another would crop up and wreak havoc on my life.

Lasting change didn’t come until I was willing to look at WHY I was coping in these destructive ways.

My childhood had been filled with several capital T Traumas and ongoing relational trauma, which led to Complex-PTSD and a dysregulated nervous system. My body learned that it was not safe to be human. I lived in a viscous cycle of high sympathetic arousal (anxiety), followed by a crash into periods of deep freeze (dissociation, numbing, checking out). Rinse and repeat.

I had to become a parent to myself that I had desperately needed when I was a child, and address my pain through a lens of curiosity and compassion. I needed to create a sense of safety that I had been robbed of in my youth. I had to get out of my head and into my physiology, which was stuck in a threat response cycle.

This explains why I tried and failed so many times at a healthy relationship with food and alcohol, why I couldn’t speak my mind and be with discomfort in my relationships, why I couldn’t love myself. It simply wasn’t safe to exist without these coping strategies. I needed to dissociate; I needed to control my external world because my internal world was so chaotic and punitive; I needed to be cruel to myself to beat others to the punch. Without those coping mechanisms, I would lose control and god only knows how bad things could get if I lost control.

Rumi said, “Maybe you are searching amongst the branches for what only appears in the roots.”

I had been trying to address and eradicate the symptoms, but the CAUSE was a nervous system locked in a timeless trauma response loop. I had to create a more stable environment for myself to begin healing.

The first step in creating a felt sense of safety in my body was to begin to notice where I felt unsafe. I learned to build capacity inside to touch into a little bit of discomfort and to return to something like noticing my breath, feeling my feet on the floor, or looking around the room for something that felt pleasant to look at. This early stabilization practice was a key to my early recovery.

With time and compassion, I have built a home inside myself where it is safe to feel big things without the need to eject myself out of the present moment. I am building capacity to experience the range of my human emotion, and learning to love myself, even the messy parts.

Healing isn’t about overriding challenge. It’s about learning to weather the storm. We need coping skills to manage life’s ups and downs, but it’s important to address why we are coping and become honest about what is happening beneath the surface if we desire real and lasting change.

** Note: As I was writing about and reflecting on this traumatic snapshot of my childhood, caring for my mother, I noticed myself starting to space out. I noticed my attention leave the story and drift off somewhere above where I sat. A few moments passed before I realized I had dissociated, and I began my practice of grounding myself back to this moment.

My mantra in moments like this, which still sometimes sneak up on me: I am safe, I am capable, I can ask for help if I need it.

Healing is not finite. It’s a continuum and the good work lies in noticing when we’ve left ourselves and once again begin the journey back to safety.