Dear fellow human,
Oh, the unknown - my dear friend… (not).
Here are some things I don’t know that have been stressing me out lately:
How long my dentist appointment on Monday will go on for.
If when I said that thing they thought I actually meant something totally different.
Whether I’ll wake up with no energy tomorrow and have to cancel my plans.
Whether that was an appropriate question to ask given the context.
How to respond to that text that seems to imply something but I’m not sure what.
What level of detail is expected in my response.
If the road noise will be too loud for me to sustain conversation and make it to the coffee shop.
Whether my bad back is actually a sign of something more sinister that the doctors have missed.
If I remembered to take my meds last night.
If I locked my front door when I took Alfie for a walk.
Whether global injustices will ever be rectified.
How to cook a meal without burning one or multiple components.
Whether I will have a meltdown this week.
If my friends love me as much as I love them.
How likely I am to sit through the theatre performance without needing to leave.
Whether I’ll be able to wear wool again.
If I’ll be lucky enough to get tickets to Aurora’s next concert.
When I’ll be able to fill that form in that is due imminently.
I used to be so ashamed of how stressed I felt about everything. I tried desperately to be easy-going at all times so no-one could see how stressed I was. With time and healing, I’m slowly trying to honour the fact that my nervous system is very sensitive and, with that, comes a boat-load of stress on a daily basis.
By acknowledging this I feel I am allowing myself space to address the stress. Acknowledging it is the first step to then taking care of myself so that my stress levels can come down.
For example, on Monday I have to get a filling at the dentist. In a nutshell, that’s my idea of hell. My dentist is one of the kindest dentists I’ve ever had the pleasure of feeling stressed-out-my-mind around; he’s humorous and light-hearted in the kind of way that makes you feel like everything might just be okay. That same easy-going attitude is the polar opposite to mine when I sit in his dentist chair. I always have a million questions. I always need to know ten steps ahead. I always need to clarify, clarify, clarify.
I’ve seen him a few times now, he’s seen my lanyard explaining I’m neurodivergent, and I’ve had a meltdown in the hygienist’s chair before, so although we haven’t directly discussed my neurotype or accommodations (I’m building the courage) he’s cottoning on.
When he told me about the whole ‘needing a couple of fillings’ thing, he not only got out his model of the human skull and showed me in detail where they would be in my mouth but also answered my clarifying questions about exactly how long it would take, how many injections I would need and where, whether I needed an urgent appointment or if coming back in three weeks would be okay, and if I could eat beforehand or if I should fast (I’m not sure why I thought this last point was relevant but, there we go, my brain likes to excavate every crevasse when I’m stressed).
Allowing myself to ask the questions meant I had the information I needed (along with some regulating techniques) to bring my stress levels down when I got home.
Sometimes, though, it’s not possible to clarify everything I would ideally like to know in order to be able to re-regulate my nervous system. For example, whether I’ll wake up with no energy tomorrow and have to cancel my plans. I can take an educated guess based on the knowledge I have about what I’ve done over the last few months, weeks, and days, where I am in my cycle, how many plans I have tomorrow, and what they are - but I can’t know.
For instances like this I use the car park technique. For some reason during my therapy sessions I always come back to a car analogy. If my therapist is trying to explain a concept to me and I’m not quite getting it I’ll see if I can apply to a car-based scenario. Not sure why, but it helps.
So, there is a multi-story carpark in my head. As we’ve discussed before, it’s not one I can see in my mind’s eye, but it’s a conceptual car park that is busy 24/7. Every car in the car park represents a worry about an unknown. I’m sure if you do have a visual mind you could get really creative with the look of each car and how that corresponds with its allocated worry about an unknown, but I’ll leave that to you - each car in my head is just a car. It’s got wheels, windscreen wipers, and it moves.
The key is that the cars in this car park are all parked. They stay in their car parking spaces nice and safe until I choose to drive them down the concrete ramps, up towards the barrier, and out onto the roads of London. Meaning, the unknowns I can’t know right now because they’re dependent on information I’m waiting for, or time passing, or whatever it may be - they stay parked, away from my every day, until it’s time for me to choose to try to tackle said unknowns.
I was sceptical at first because it reminded me of being told “oh don’t worry about it it'll be fine”, as if just by saying that my worries no longer have substance. But this is different - by parking the cars I’m not trying to brush off the unknown like it shouldn’t stress me out, I’m simply acknowledging there’s an unknown there and actively choosing to address it at a later date. For whatever reason, this sometimes helps me stop stewing on stressful unknowns that are months ahead.
If the car park tool doesn’t do it for you, don’t worry about it - I expect it’s pretty specific to my brain! But by sharing I hope that it helps you feel less alone in the stress of the unknown - I’m out here navigating alongside you.
Sending you much love,
Charlie xoxo
P.s.
I won’t be sharing a podcast Q&A for March because I’m preparing myself for a trip next week that is taking a lot of my energy. I will however be writing to you next week with my travel tips for neurodivergent humans, so you’ll still hear from me. If you would like to revisit previous Q&As you can find them all here, and our next Q&A podcast will be at the end of April/beginning of May (how are we so far through the year already?!). Thank you for understanding. xoxo
P.p.s.
A special thank you to all of my paid subscibers who are helping me to rebuild my life as a writer and artist after breakdown and burnout. I meditate on my gratitude for your support of my purpose every morning. ❤︎
I really relate to this post. I have had a not so good week but most of it is in my head. Filled with anxiety! I’ll just keep journaling and practicing yoga. 🙏🏻💜💜
Thank you for this post! I love the concept of the car park (or parkade as we call it in western Canada :P). In the past I have done something similar but with colourful stones. It's a practice I stopped a long time ago, but your post has reminded me of it. I am now planning to make a trip to the beach and collect a couple of worry stones that I can hold in my hand when I have an anxious moment. It helped me to 'place' the worry into the stone, and set it aside to deal with a different time.