Claustrophobia and Freedom

"I'm feeling lousy," I told my therapist. "I'm not sure I can any longer tell if I'm feeling depressed or anxious or both. It's been so long and they are so mushed together."

I've been feeling like curling into myself. I want to hide, to be small, to wrap myself into a tight little package. I could feel the muscles in my neck pushing my head forward and the muscles in my chest pulling my arms inward. And I wanted Michele to fix it.

So we talked. Mostly, I talked and she listened. Then I would pause and she would ask a question or make a comment that would lead me in a particular direction or spark another idea that I then followed.

I ended up talking about my housemates and my living situation. (From now on, I'm going to give them non de plumes, to more gracefully refer to them. They shall be Griffin and Sabine, which suits her more than him.) About how while I am truly grateful to Sabine for not allowing me to pay room and board — I only have to pay my own personal bills — and for buying me things, like the sweaters and warm socks she's just purchased for me so I will be warm this autumn and winter, I hate being dependent. I hate not being able to provide myself with these things.

And, in a way, there is a price for these wonderful things. Nothing that is expected or demanded of me. No, it is a situational and emotional price. Because my housemates' issues unfortunately trigger my worst issues and are making me want to be invisible and making me want to hide. I'm caught up in their issues and the blacklash of my own, and it seems that the result is that I'm focused more on those dramas than on myself and my own needs.

For example, Sabine is super-sensitive to noise. She also has anger issues. So the other night, when I was trying to manipulate a hot dish from the microwave, one without handles, using silicone hot pads, I was making lots of glass-on-glass noise. Eventually, Sabine exploded, took the dish with her bare hands ("It's hot!" I said. "I know," she said.), removed the lid, and set the dish on a cutting board. She continued to be angry and everything inside of me shrank and shriveled, even as I kept repeating to myself "not my issue, not my issue". When she calmed down later, she apologized. But the damage was done for the day.


It seems Griffin has picked up some of Sabine's issues over the years. He is a lot more sensitive to sound than he was in years before. He has more of a temper, too. And I have no warning when something will set him off, especially because he still acts like everything is kind of a joke. Until suddenly it's not.

In therapy, I had gone from describing my own feelings to the dramas of my household: how my housemates react, how I react in turn, changes in the household dynamics. So Michele asked me to consider something else.

There's nothing I can do about most of the housemate thing. I can't leave because there's nowhere to go and I can't afford to live anywhere else anyway. I can't change them. And I'm not going to be changing my feelings and issues and triggers that quickly.

Instead, said Michele, maybe I need to see where in my life there is an openness, a freedom, an ease. She pointed out how in her office there is a lot of open space; it is not crammed full of things. It feels open and spacious and comfortable in there. I feel good in her office and in her waiting room. I'm sure they are designed just for that purpose.

The house I'm living in is fairly packed with furniture and books and dishes and other things. Sabine collects. But as Michele was talking, I realized that the living room, where I am most comfortable, has cathedral ceilings and large windows: lots of openness above and outside the crowd of couches and tables and lamps and books.

Also, Michele's words made me think of movement outward, of stepping away from the house and my housemates and into some other environment. Like hanging out in a coffee shop or the library and writing for a couple of hours. Like going for a walk in the park to relieve the claustrophobic feelings my living situation inspires in me, to let my mind and body open wider.

As I'm sitting here, on the purple chaise, writing this post, I am visited by a visual of, on one side, a small constrained space with a lot of pressure, and on the other side a wide-open space that's fluid and relaxed. There is a small inlet/outlet, like a channel, between them and I can see the fluid or energy in the tight space moving outward into the open space, shooting out in a swirling jet, then dissipating and spreading out into the open space.

I think this is what Michele was working on getting me to do, to move outward from a tight, tense place into an open, relaxed place. Obviously I cannot do it completely yet, but just being able to do it physically on a regular basis, and to find ways to do it mentally, might help relieve these feelings I'm having, feelings that are like the worst parts of my childhood revisited.

I want to get to a place where I can feel grateful for all that Sabine provides for me, without resenting that I need it or that I have to endure painful dramas while receiving it. I want to enjoy the companionship of my friends without wanting to pull away from them and hide. I want to own my own space — mental and physical — and allow myself room to expand, to breathe, to develop my own life here, and to deal with my own issues. I need to focus energy and time on myself and my needs, rather than someone else's, if I am going to find work, find friends, find my own home.

I need the space to uncoil myself before I curl up so tightly I disappear.