224: Anxiety After Your Child Dies
I had anxiety before Aria died. Not too bad, but I had it and I lived with it. But after Aria died, my anxiety went through the roof. Literally unable to relax ever. Everything I saw around my kids had the potential to kill them. Really, I saw threats everywhere. I wanted to bubble wrap my kids and prevent them from getting hurt. I constantly checked on them. I constantly checked on my husband. I was literally a ball of stress - on pins and needles.
When I think of that time in my life, I’m a little amazed that I survived. That was really a horrible time, because it was so horrific and stressful.
We all already know that anxiety is not healthy for you. Right? We know that. We know that it’s not something anyone wants to live with. It’s not something you’re choosing or I’m choosing and yet the anxiety rates are climbing and it seems to be a huge problem. Some problems that can come with anxiety, which you probably already know because you’re living with it. But I want to just share them again here, and the health problems - things like stomach problems, numb face, lightheadedness, panic attacks, or whatever health problems if you’ve had that you’ve been experiencing with anxiety.
So when I was living in horrific anxiety, I was not only anxious all the time, but on top of that, I felt horribly guilty about my anxiety because I knew it was not only affecting me but my kids and my household. I knew that I could be passing this on to my kids, and that kids that grow up with an anxious mom can be more anxious themselves, so to add the guilt on top of the anxiety.
I think most people know what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, but then people will say things to you or to somebody that seem to imply that you can control what you are feeling and thinking. But then some people might say something like, if you’re experiencing anxiety and they might tell you to just let it go, or don’t worry about it. I don’t think that they are trying to cause harm or be mean, they might be trying to be helpful but it doesn’t seem very useful at all to me.
So what does this mean about anxiety? If you can’t just let it go, or stop worrying about it, what kind of choices do you have? Because it's a horrible thing to live with. So you wanna be done with it, right? You don’t want to just be living with it.
You could take medication, which might be useful for some, and maybe useful for a time for others, but it can also be detrimental to others and really affect their quality of life. You could go to a therapist and talk about your anxiety and your problems, and this tends to actually make the anxiety more intense and worse. When you start to focus on your anxiety, ruminating about your anxiety and worry about your anxiety can amplify it. You could try to relax more, which could help, but how do you even begin to relax when you are constantly on edge and your body literally cannot relax?
So most people think that you can just deal with the emotion and the thought, and that you should just be able to let it go. But what I’ve been learning - and I’ve learned from my own experience - is that where the emotions and thoughts are coming from, are from a different place when we are usually trying to fix them.
So think of it if I came up to you and I said, “Hey, I’m trying to change this song on this speaker, I don’t want this song playing, I don’t really like it.”. I keep yelling at the speaker, I keep shaking it, I keep looking for different buttons, and it's just not working. It’s not listening to me. And then you gently tell me, “Hey Megan, that’s because the music is not coming from the speaker, it’s coming from this device over here. This is where the music is coming from. So you have to go to the device in order to change the music.”.
So, I want to share really quickly a few thoughts about anxiety that have significantly helped me. I’ve shared on here in another episode that I had significantly reduced my anxiety in my life with EMDR. I had come to a place in my life where I thought it’s just something I have to live with to some extent, that it was just something that I had to manage since I personally didn’t want to medicate it, I kind of thought that the tools that I have in my toolbelt those are my ways of managing anxiety. Anxiety would always be something that I will have to manage. That it won’t be something I will be able to completely get rid of, but that I will be able to manage it and keep it under control and that I can function daily in my life.
And then, I’ve learned different things about anxiety, and I got some RRT sessions done and literally, I am amazed at how little anxiety shows up for me. So there are times it might pop up - which seems to be rarer and rarer these days - but it’s so much less, and definitely not as intense. I can kind of manage it or calm down pretty quickly without having to do anything.
I used to have moments where I would have to go sit and do my tapping and sit with the sensations in my body because I couldn’t function otherwise. I would have to take a break from my life, manage my anxiety, so I can get back to it.
Now, it doesn’t affect my life that significantly, and I’m usually able to just calm it down during whatever I’m doing, and I’m fine.
It’s weird. It really is.
So I’m going to share three different types or parts of anxiety and I intend for this to be useful for you. If we were to do an RRT session together, I would go way deeper into this, but since this is a shorter podcast episode I’ll share a bit about these.
Often if you go to the doctor, you are just told you have anxiety, and there is little understanding about why or how this happens. So it just becomes your identity as you are someone with anxiety. That’s who you are. You just take the identity on, take it as part of who you are and you know, you’re an anxious person and so this is how diagnoses can really become cemented into our identity and who we are.
So here I want to share, number one, that you have been experiencing anxiety, you are not anxiety, and how anxiety works a bit to bring some more understanding.
I think of anxiety as having 3 parts.
The first part is the threat. Your mind can’t tell the difference between a real or imagined threat. If it’s useful for you to have fear in your body, like you are being chased, it’s a useful response because when your mind perceives a threat, like a lion is chasing you, it helps you get stronger - makes your life stronger, make you heart stronger, makes your heart pumps faster, makes you breath faster - in trying to get away from the threat.
If it’s a perceived threat like, “What happens if I fail my Chemistry test”, again, your mind can’t tell the difference, and it makes you stronger to protect you from that threat, but you can’t run away from a test. Running won't do you any good.
Mind sees threat, it makes you stronger, and for most of us, this is useless because the threats we have in our lives don’t make us need to be stronger and faster to get away from the threat. So it’s useless. But most of us perceive anxiety to be making us weaker, when really it’s making you stronger.
Number two, is when the mind perceives a threat and is making you stronger, your heart beats faster, your breath quickens.
If you are running a marathon, you are not like - “Oh! Why is my heart beating faster, why am I breathing heavier? If you are sitting there and your heart starts beating faster and your breath quickens, you don’t say - “Oh! My heart is beating faster and I'm breathing faster because I’m getting stronger. Yey! My body and its defense and everything is working great.”. You might think, “What is wrong with me? Why is my heart beating so fast when I’m just sitting here? Something is wrong.”. I’m falling apart and all those things.
Then your mind says, “Oh! There’s more threat, so let’s make you stronger.”. The cycle starts again. Your mind makes the body stronger, and then the person perceives strength as a threat, which continues the mind to make the body stronger, and so this just a cycle that continues and continues.
The last part is when the mind starts gathering data and information about the threat. Why is this here? Where did this come from? How do I protect myself? What else do I need to know? This might be what you call anxiety about anxiety. Racing thoughts. Where you are trying to figure out where it’s coming from. Why am I thinking this way? Why am I feeling this way? Why am I anxious?
I used to think that I needed to get to the bottom of where my anxiety was coming from. Why am I getting anxious? What’s going on? Where’s this coming from? What am I thinking about?
I’ve since realized that I don’t need to know. Which is so freeing! I just understand that my mind is perceiving a threat that doesn’t exist and I tell my mind there’s no threat. It’s so weird! I don’t need to figure it out or understand where it’s coming from.
That’s the three parts of anxiety. I definitely can go way deeper into this and really help move forward things with anxiety with you but I wanted to share a little bit with you, so that I could start being useful for you right now.
I want to share that after my maternity leave, which I don’t know how long I will take, but when I’m ready to do it, I’m planning on doing an Anxiety and Grief program inside of Grieving Moms Haven. I’m super excited about this because - I know it’s very common and it’s something a lot of us believe we just have to live with, and be able to function - I know what it’s like to live with such horrific anxiety. It can literally ruin your daily function. Not only that you are grieving your child, now you’re anxious and worried and scared every reasonable day. You are starting to avoid things because you don’t want to feel anxious or to feel out of control and like there’s nothing you can do about it. And that child loss just truly ratchets up anxiety to a whole other level.
This would be a live course where I teach you different things about anxiety, and do R.R.T. sessions and my intention would be for you to come in with what you believe to be anxiety that you just have to live with. When you are done with the program, you’ll have minimal anxiety and you’ll know what to do with it if it showed up. So it won’t be a problem with you anymore.
It will be a few months before I do this program, but for those of you who are interested, you can either get inside of Grieving Moms Haven when the doors open up, or go to www.meganhillukka.com and watch my free video on anxiety and grief, and get on my email list that way, so you don’t miss this course when it happens.
I’m always rooting for you my friend. I know that you don’t want to live with anxiety. It’s not that you aren’t trying hard enough or that you’re doing it wrong, like I said, most of us try to get rid of anxiety from the wrong place, so what I can guide you in doing is clearing the anxiety from the place it’s actually coming from.
Take care and I’ll see you next week!
Have you felt anxiety after your child died?
The racing mind, unable to sleep, waiting for the next bad thing to happen, unable to breathe, panicky kind of anxiety, whole body riddled with anxiety?
Watch my free video on anxiety and grief below!
So that you can think clearly, feel calm in your body, and live your life without the chains of anxiety.
