Fear and indecision got you frozen?

I’m going to make a confession. I’ve been struggling in the last few months–with food, exercise, staying on top of my paperwork, getting housework done–just about everything.

I’ve been going through a lot of change and loss in the last few months. My father’s illness and death was traumatic for me, especially the last few hours in a hands on role of actually helping him die. My mother’s response to her grief has been to vacillate between bittersweet tenderness, and raw grief that is excruciating to watch. Other times she just has huge vacancies in her thought process. I lost my father, and now I’m losing my mother too, although far less dramatically.

There are other losses. My work is changing, and I’m being forced to do some things that bore me just to pay the bills. I’m coming to the end of the Stupid About Men campaign, and though the book is good and helps a lot of women, my publisher crashed and burned right after it was released. Valuable momentum was lost, and that hurt sales.

 But even saying that feels silly. I’m so blessed to even have gotten published and having experienced the things that I have. I am so fortunate to have choices, and the ability to earn a living doing what I love, even if it is not quite in the way I imagined.

The most overpowering emotion, I suppose, is fear. I am afraid of what lies ahead with my mother, the economy, and the health of my husband and son, both who have serious conditions.

 So in the face of those emotions I tend to freeze. I cannot bring myself to exercise, forget to pay bills, waste valuable time on unimportant projects, procrastinate on the big ones, and crave heavy comfort foods.

Actually, this is a common response. We have been told about “fight or flight” but we don’t talk about the most common response in a crisis–that is to ”freeze.”Disaster experts know that the reason so many people die during earthquakes, fires, and tsunami is that they don’t run, or fight for survival. They freeze, and are lost.

The same reaction happens in the face of bad news, traumatic loss, or unusual fear. Say we get fired, we are told by the doctor we have a serious illness, or our husband asks for a divorce. Our first reaction is shock, denial, and disbelief. In most cases that passes, but many people get stuck; we freeze. A client of mine told me (he’d been diagnosed with a terminal debilitating illness) that he felt “caught like a deer in the headlights”. That’s a perfect description. To a much lesser degree, that is what we all experience when we are faced with situations where we don’t know what to do.

Of course, this affects our relationships too. We get angry easily, are very irritable, moody, emotional, and often we withdraw. We may cope by demanding ever more attention from our men. We gain weight, hate ourselves, and take it out on others.

So how to do we get out of it? Talking with those who will support us helps, and journaling, as I’m doing a bit here. Staying away from people who only feed our indecision, or use our indecision to manipulate us.  And then there is scripture, prayer, and reading devotions. Prioritizing, making lists, and eating the elephant of insurmountable tasks “one bite at a time.”

Getting “unstuck” from  the ice of indecision and fear is work; hard work.  The wisest thing I’ve heard anyone say (I think it was Elizabeth Elliott) is “when you don’t know what to do, praise the Lord.”

So I am praising the Lord. Slowly,  I’m getting my mojo back. I’m getting organized in my office, recredentialing myself with insurance carriers, and applying for grants for my nonprofit. I’m letting go of the things that are not working in my life, and focusing on what does. I’m beginning to get excited about what the Lord may be doing, particularly with missions work in El Salvadore and Haiti.

But there is a risk here, and it is common for us overchieving, perfectionist women who are strongwilled. However, you are just going to have to come back later in the week. You’ll find out what I’m talking about in Part II…