Rebound Effect

Wednesday's post was like flying, like rocketing up through the clouds into bright sunlight. Thursday was like faltering at the peak of my flight, Friday was stalling and then falling back through the dark clouds towards the earth, and today was like crashing in a fiery explosion on the ground. I am experiencing such a strong anxiety reaction that I had to spend over 45 minutes in bed this morning talking to myself and breathing just so I could get out of bed to take a Xanax to calm myself. And instead of the .5-mg that I've been taking for morning and afternoon doses, I returned to 1-mg doses for both of those. I'm still quaking inside, but I'm functional. Mostly.

How did I go from Wednesday to today, from being filled with light and life to being filled with shards of glass and fear?

One highly likely possibility is via the Rebound Effect, where my peak that came from reaching great depths in therapy rebounded to depths in response to the vulnerability and the anxieties and insecurities that remained in place even after the wonderful therapy-initiated learning. Vulnerability and fear operated like rubber bands to pull me back an amount equal to what therapy helped me soar to.

Why? Well, Wednesday did not cure me — it just provided me with new insights and perspectives and even handholds to keep pulling me toward progress. But I have been more vulnerable, to varying degrees, in the years since my fortifications were breached, and when I touch things deep inside myself during therapy or self-exploration, I am extremely vulnerable and all my history has taught me that vulnerability makes me unsafe, so touching that vulnerability can spark an equally powerful fear response. I think that is part of my response, my anxiety.

The other thing is that I have been feeling anxious and disappointed in myself for not having other paid work and for not searching hard for other work for many weeks. Add to that the fact that I didn't follow through with a commitment I made to the housemate who is supporting me (I agreed I would water some potted plants for her while she was at work, plants that were showing dryness and that she doesn't want to lose, and I had not done so by the time she got home), and she went into one of her temper fits, which triggered many of my worst anxiety and fear responses.

I apologized, after she finished watering the plants herself and came indoors. She eventually cooled off and apologized for her temper. But my anxiety is still resonating inside of me, and today I have been online a lot and I took a long nap, instead of baking as I wanted.


I'm in a highly vulnerable situation. I'm being supported by someone. I'm having difficulties finding work. My insecurity and lack of confidence is triggering my shyness, causing me to be more likely to skip a networking event. I'm living with volatile people who have personal rules that I don't know and that I often transgress because I don't know them. I am achieving important insights in therapy and thus am emotionally vulnerable.

This morning, as I lay in bed trying to talk myself into being able to get up, I kept reminding myself that vulnerability = strength, not weakness. If you are truly invulnerable, like Superman, then it hardly requires strength or courage to live a life worth living.

Fear tends to be my fall-back position. I'm working on that. I have some books that deal with fear in different ways; I just need to return to reading them! And I need to keep talking to myself about vulnerability and strength and courage and fear. I need to do work: meditation, creative visualization, exercise, self-talk, the Wonder Woman pose, and so on. I obviously have a lot to do regarding fear and anxiety, and I have a great deal of motivation to do that work because it's been a while since I've felt this punched by anxiety and even panic. Even with the Xanax, I've been feeling a steady stream of adrenaline and cortisol running through my body all day and It Is Not Pleasant!

So, I reread Wednesday's post. I think I will do so a few more times. I am breathing. I am taking an online class on Creativity, Innovation, and Change and some of the materials discuss fear, so I've read and watched videos and thought. And I'm going to read at least one section of one book to address fear, and/or do some mental work on that topic. I might have some chocolate ice cream, purely for the endorphins, mind you!

I really hate how I've felt today and I want out of it NOW. So while I won't actually get out of it immediately, I'm going to do some things to mitigate these feelings to the best of my abilities. And I'm going to do some work that I hope will decrease the intensity of any similar reactions in the future. Doing this work could eventually decrease these reactions to something very close to zero, or so I think.

Movement forward and movement backward, but I still think I ended up with a net forward movement. My head is convinced. My flight or fight response still needs some work.

Onward and upward. Sigh.