Being on top of your healthcare is tremendously important. I work with my private clients closely on how to prepare for appointments, track traveling embryos, and make sure all people are on the same page with regards to your care (and your child's medical care). It's crucial to be vigilant with childcare and to hire the right people you trust, to help you at home or at work. Control is not a bad thing.
In fact, it's a good thing and I did an entire podcast episode on why it's important to maintain control on your family-building journey and after!
But when letting go of that control causes anxiety, when you believe that you can't trust anyone, when letting your mom (if she is trustworthy) watch your child creates panic, That's not a control-issue.
That is trauma.
The basic truth about trauma of all kinds When you're living with unresolved trauma, that means you're experiencing an inherent lack of safety. The loss(es), high-risk pregnancy, preterm delivery , infertility trauma you've experienced has robbed you of a basic sense of safety. Even being in your body doesn't feel safe.
Period cramps remind you of preterm contractions. Going to the bathroom cause anxiety, even though you may not even be pregnant anymore. Heart palpitations (from dehydration or fatigue) remind you of the moment you delivered your baby preterm.
However, our brains are always searching for safety. When even our bodies don't feel safe, our brains look to create that safety by trying to control the things around us. Our environment. Other people. Our lives. The problem? It's not sustainable.
At some point this will break down. Your mom or babysitter will make a mistake and feed your baby too much or too little. Your dog will chew the shoes you need to wear for your first presentation at work. Your dinner will burn and your family will have to order out at the last minute.
When things like that do happen - because they will if they haven't already - that unresolved trauma is unleashed, creating panic, overwhelm, digestive and heart troubles, nightmares and flashbacks...
You'll start to feel all the symptoms you were trying to control by micromanaging in order to create a sense of safety. You're not anal or a control freak. You're not rigid, untrusting or incapable of letting go. This is trauma.
What do you do about it?
In understanding where this behavior comes from, I hope you can lessen the judgment you're carrying about yourself. You can show yourself some compassion and grace, especially if people around you have been trying to get you to "chill out" and "relax"!
I hope you can see that changing your behavior will only go so far, because when you don't feel safe, your brain will always have one goal and one goal only: to find safety. So if it's not micromanaging, it will be some other form of behavior with the same purpose that will also be unsustainable.
I hope you can see that the only way to break this cycle is to reestablish safety. To actually feel safe again so your brain can stop searching for safety. So you can stop creating habits that have a false sense of safety, a mirage that does not last.
Rebuilding safety, re-training your nervous system to deactivate the chronic arousal you've been feeling, and releasing the unresolved trauma...that is what The Whole Story is all about.
When we give our brains what they're asking for, there is no need for our bodies to create symptoms.
Doors to The Whole Story close on August 7, 2019 and will not reopen until spring or summer of 2020.
I can't wait to see you on the inside and guide you to releasing the shacks of trauma and grief from the past so you can find freedom and peace in your present.