unmasked

Last night, after a day of nonsensical emotional agony (to be explained more later), I went to bed before ten, in childlike anticipation of the magical 5 AM club that was going to fix everything in my life!

Promptly at 3:20 AM, I woke up and could not get back to sleep. My alarm went off at 4:50 AM.

Whatever, the important thing is being up at 5 AM, right?

So, loosely following the oft-repeated idyllic morning routine Dr. Chatterjee observes, I dragged myself out of bed despite finally starting to feel sleepy again and, like Chatterjee, started with some exercise right in my own space! (My gym doesn’t open til 6.) I had even bought a kettlebell, as Chatterjee describes he keeps in the kitchen, implicitly over his wife’s objection.

I did the fitbit kettlebell workout grudgingly. I was sleepy. It’s annoying to feel like you’re working out hard and have your heart rate show on the screen as much lower than you’d think. And I definitely banged the weight into my knee at least once.

I showered, but that was about all the healthy habit I could muster for the moment. I returned to my candy-crush-knockoff game while drying off from my shower, biding my time mindlessly until I had to lead morning services virtually.

I put on an Ezra Klein Israel podcast and dissociated from the rest of the morning, but at least I didn’t snap at my husband or kids.

7:15 AM. I sped through leading services, then tried to take a nap afterward, still feeling sleepy. I don’t think I managed to get any sleep, but I felt sleepy enough that it seemed almost like a nap. During the “nap” I began listening to this Chatterjee episode, “Resolve Anxiety,” which seemed on point to my nonsensical emotional agony, if a bit understated.

Dr. Kennedy helpfully suggested describing anxiety as “Alarm,” to distinguish the mind’s “anxiety” from the processes happening in the body. Yes! He continued: CBT-type approaches ask us to use our mind to calm our body, when that’s backwards – we should be using our body to calm our mind. YES YES!

I totally buy into the whole focus on the physiological stuff, but never been successful with it. But this “alarm” container feels like we might be getting somewhere.

I got up again around 9 AM. I didn’t finish the podcast episode… who can finish a Chatterjee podcast in one sitting? They’re each the length of a Lord of the Rings Film. I proceeded outside to the porch for coffee, my Chatterjee three-question journal, and my Elul routine which includes five minutes of meditation.

But the darned nonsensical emotional agony. The Alarm. I couldn’t shake it.

Where is it in your body? The podcast suggests, and I’ve heard before, that different people tend to “hold” anxiety in specific places in their body. That’s never resonated with me; when I try to figure out where the tension is, I can find it almost everywhere. But I tried it during my meditation. Where is the “alarm”?

Knot in stomach. Chest pounding. Ok.

Breathe into it? Ok. Nope.

5 minute meditation alarm. Still in agony. What next?

I set another meditation alarm. Maybe I just need a little extra breathing. Three minutes in… no better.

OK, what’s next? I start writing in the blank journal I have in front of me. Still experiencing intolerable emotional pain, in the same places in my body and seemingly elsewhere too. But the stomach was the most noticeable, the most impairing, the thing that I did not believe I could accomplish anything until getting rid of.

My default response to the feeling Dr. Kennedy describes as “alarm” is to externalize, which (perhaps I’ll get into this later too) can be really harmful. I’m committed to not doing it this morning.

I’m going to have to find something else.

I go for a run without my phone. I run the three blocks to the playground and a loop around the playground. The stomach knot dislodges a bit! I swing on the swings for a minute or two. I grab a book from the little free library. I walk back home; the “alarm” creeps back in, though not as intensely as before.

I walk up my porch steps. Each step the knot builds. Ok, let’s write about this. I sit down with my pencil and journal. I write a sentence. Wait, maybe I could blog this 5 AM club thing?

Over the course of the kickoff post and this one, the “alarm” knot has intensified again. It’s the procrastination; it’s the impending failure of the High Holidays responsibilities I’ve been tasked with. It’s the worry that I have committed malpractice despite deeply caring about my client’s case and trying hard. It’s the lack of response to my somewhat-vulnerable evening text to someone I used to think of as a very close friend, now in an awkward supervisory relationship to me that seems to have sucked dry the foundational regard that I had relied on as unshakable when I agreed to take this position.

It is now 12:51 PM, and I have resisted the urge to cancel the call with an important partner at my law firm headquarters, which is to take place in less than ten minutes. I won’t know until it’s over whether it was the right call to take this meeting… I might not even know then. I don’t know whether it was the right call to blow off yesterday’s meeting.

So, day 1 of the 5 AM club I’m calling a bust. We’ll try again tomorrow: bedtime at 10 AM, alarm set for ten til five. And I ordered the book.