It sounds so fake, but sometimes the answer to "How do I deal with this big huge terrifying kraken of Fear that is taking over my life?" is literally just...give it less space to take up.
In the past, any needle-related appointment on my calendar was this big looming kraken of dread. It felt like the end of the world. A black hole that I couldn't envision the future beyond. I'm not kidding or exaggerating when I say some part of me thought of it like the date of my scheduled execution. (It doesn't help that the fainting episode I have immediately after physically feels like I'm dying.) The more logical side understood that this was irrational and I would survive, but that I'd also surely need to spend a week or so mentally preparing myself beforehand, plus a day or two of just moping around afterward to recover from the ordeal. You know. #SelfCare.
I made this enormous multi-day sea monster with a hundred hungry tentacles out of something that is, on its face, a shitty 15 minutes at the most.
And it sucks, right? Because I know why I did that. I had a traumatic early childhood experience—2 years old or so, held down on a cold metal table by strangers with a hundred rubbing-alcohol-scented hands and twisting dark shadows on the wall shouting HOLD STILL while they jabbed me with multiple shots at once as I thrashed and screamed and begged them to stop because for all I knew, they were going to kill me—that gave me a primal, visceral fear of needles and everything around them. And then, as I grew up, family members and friends and medical professionals saw my disproportionate fear and told me to quit being so dramatic about something that doesn't even hurt that bad! (As if I don't know that. As if the problem was ever the pain and not the loss of control, the shattering of trust.)
My kraken of fear was a big deal for me, and when people dismissed and invalidated my feelings by telling me it wasn't, the only natural response for a contrarian like me was to dig my heels in and make it an even bigger deal. That meant I was in control, right? A perfect plan with no flaws whatsoever! Except for the part where it could've gotten me killed.
It didn't, thankfully, and my abdominal pain turned out to be a couple of ovarian cysts that resolved on their own, but the hours I spent writhing on the floor in agony last June because if I go to the emergency room they are going to put needles in me might've done me in had my initial suspicion of appendicitis been correct. Didn't matter. To that deep part of my brain that deals in adrenaline and tiger attacks, the kraken was certain death, and possible death was preferable to that. I could only be taken in once the pain burned through my ability to resist.
Gorging itself on all the ground I gave it, the kraken had grown larger than my capacity to reason, my judgment, even my desire to stay alive for the people I love. But in therapy, I learned the way to shrink it down was to...well, give it less space to take up!
It wasn't comfortable or easy. Often, giving the kraken less space meant getting closer to it myself. But it also meant bringing other stuff with me—a bag with helpful items, like an ice pack (to put on my face as a mammalian dive reflex hack if I go into a freeze response + also for fainting recovery) and a jacket (helps with the irrational fear I have in every doctor's office that someone's gonna sneak up and jab me when I'm not expecting it). I brought a trusted support person in with me, too, and every inch of space he took up was an inch that the kraken couldn't have.
I scheduled the appointment for first thing in the morning on a Saturday instead of ceding the whole day to anxiously awaiting the kraken, and planned a fun movie day with my friends for the afternoon, and suddenly the shadow the kraken cast was so much smaller that I could see the future on the other side of it. The appointment approached, two weeks away, then a week, and when the old familiar doom-dread tried to creep in, I turned it away until the appointed 15 shitty minutes arrived.
Those 15 shitty minutes are 45 minutes away when I order donuts for pickup in an hour and now the kraken is no larger than an errand. I reach the lab. A kind-eyed young woman in scrubs ushers us back. I mention "a little needle anxiety." She asks if there's anything she can do to help me. I smile and assure her I have it under control, just don't be alarmed if I get dizzy. "But I don't think it'll be bad." She agrees.
My partner is sitting in the chair opposite me. I take off the left side of my jacket and stick out my left arm. Tear open the extreme sour candy in my right pocket that I purposely didn't try beforehand and pop it in my mouth like it's a magic elixir of courage. Sour isn't even the right word. A lemon is sour. This just tastes loud. Staring at the sun while a fire alarm goes off. Make a fist for me? Good. Like a poison dart frog nestled on my tongue. Caution tape, high-vis. Spray paint? The space a dime-sized piece of candy can take up! Half the RAM of my awareness for the space of thirty seconds and the other half is making a wish when the needle goes in like Lorde.
The blood draw takes more than thirty seconds but even after the candy stops tasting like WARNING!, even after the wish is wished for, I don't faint. My breath comes slow and steady. The gauze is being taped on and my partner is making shadow puppets on the wall and I'm thinking, this is what being in control actually feels like. The kraken can only breathe the air that isn't in my lungs, can only eat the time that I feed it, can only exist in the space that I give it and I am not giving it a fucking inch anymore.
gummygunk
annaxmalina
2087
blakekathryn
kaledo-art
