Since I last wrote, I’ve accomplished 2 scary things. Well, not scary to the average person, but scary for me. (I skipped writing last week because of one of those scary things.)
I was feeling very overwhelmed earlier this month, and this idea kept lingering that I need a personal retreat. A simple getaway for a couple days, relatively local. At the last minute, I booked a nice but not super fancy hotel for myself, one with a pool and breakfast included. Then I had planned on spending the day at one of my favorite art museums. …I’ve always said that one of the luxuries of being single is getting to spontaneously do whatever you want, as your decisions don’t really affect anyone else.
But I learned some things about myself while on my solo trip. One thing was: I don’t love solo trips. (And this luxury of doing whatever you want is a little overrated). When I’ve traveled by myself before, it was usually to visit friends or family, so I wasn’t alone the whole time. But driving and exploring on my own was… not bad, but not great either. The free room upgrade was nice, but I didn’t love everything else on my own.
The other thing I learned was something that’s been percolating for a long time: I have ADHD. (I wondered if it was the autism spectrum, but ADHD has been making a lot more sense.) The more I learn about neurotransmitters and talk to people about what ADHD looks like in everyday life, the more I’m sure I have it. (I’m actually interested in getting an official diagnosis at some point.) But I really felt its effects while I was on my own. On one hand, I got to understand how and why new environments help the ADHD brain with rest and focus time. On the other hand, I had a hard time being fully present in my day trip because new stimuli triggers an explosion of scattered, buzzing thoughts, and I had no one to verbally process with.
I also wound up not going to the art museum, as I found out it was randomly closed. Instead, I went to a botanical garden in Delaware. So the first scary thing I accomplished was: leaving the state on my own. It’s vulnerable to admit, but with having driving anxieties since my car accident, I had never driven to a different state… until last week. That sense of accomplishment was probably my biggest takeaway from my solo retreat. I was thankful to have a place to go swimming afterward, which is one of the ways I can shut off all the extra buzzing in my head.
The second scary thing (which, again, is maybe a little embarrassing) was driving to downtown Harrisburg. I’ve lived in Pennsylvania for 23 years, and I’ve never driven to the city. I’ve ridden with other people and driven around it, but never driven to it on my own. The reason I drove there this time was because I got an invitation to the governor’s mansion to show artwork for an event full of dignataries. (I was one of 4 artists!) So it took an invitation from the governor to get me to go to my state’s capitol city. …Of all the worst case scenarios playing out in my head, none of them happened. I could probably even see going there a little more often! (To the city, not the governor’s mansion.)
With having stepped over the borders of my comfort zone just a little bit, it makes that much more possible as far as what I could face and where I could go. I recently started watching a show on Disney+ called Limitless, which centers on Chris Hemsworth pushing himself to do scary things in order to live longer and not get as stressed over typical, everyday challenges. (Turns out, there are scarier things than rush hour in downtown Harrisburg. Who’d have thought?)
In the first episode, he had to put himself in a number of scary, stressful situations–like a firefighter exercise–in order to learn about stress regulation in the body. The simple practices he learned, like mindfulness, positive self-talk, and breathing regulation are what came through during his culmination stress test: walking across a crane at the top of a tall building. He was, understandably, scared out of his mind as he stood at the end of the crane, but coming back, he felt more in control, at rest, and even confident.
I found that, to make myself do the scary (to me) things, I had to stop thinking and just do it. I also needed a non-negotiable date and time to make myself go do it. Without that, the intention gets lost in the land of “eventually.” I’ve recently come to like the quote: “It makes sense if you don’t think about it.” If I take my mind out of the doomsday future scenarios and just drive like I would on any normal road I know, being fully present, The Scary Thing just gets done, and it’s not scary anymore.
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