I remember lying in bed next to my husband when our daughters were about 2 and 3 years old. It was the middle of the night, and I was wide awake — not because the girls had woken me up, but because my brain was racing. Again. Still.
This time I was obsessing about the shoes at the bottom of the stairs. Our front door opened into the bottom of our stairway, and no matter how often I lined them up against the wall, the toddler sneakers and work shoes and snow boots inevitably ended up in a giant messy pile right between the door and the stairs.
I was worried about the possibility that the first responders would trip on their way up the stairs to get one of my daughters. To be clear, the girls were fine. They were healthy, and other than occasional midnight trips to the ER when their croup got bad, we didn’t have medical emergencies. We’d never had to call 911.
But what if? What if one of them stopped breathing? Or fell out of bed and hit her head? Or something else terrible happened and we had to call the paramedics and they couldn’t get to one of my babies on time because of those damn shoes?
And so I laid there for what felt like hours, debating whether I should put the shoes away or not. Each time I pushed the blanket aside, ready to sneak downstairs just long enough to clear a pathway for the first responders, the same thought popped into my brain: “Only a crazy person gets up in the middle of the night to tidy up for paramedics they don’t need to call.”
But what if?
It wasn’t until a couple of years later (after I went back to therapy and started taking meds), that I realized I didn’t need to live my entire life in the world of What If? Despite the fact that I was a licensed therapist with a PhD in clinical social work, I couldn’t see my obsessive, intrusive thinking and constant worry for what they were: anxiety (specifically, generalized anxiety disorder).
It took me time (and therapy and lots and lots of reading) to recognize all of the symptoms of my anxiety (the three biggies were worry, exhaustion and irritability) and identify the causes (genetics, hormones, a sleep disorder and being a Jewish mother in this moment in history). It took me even longer to accept that even though my anxiety was never going to be cured, there was a lot I could do to manage it. Now, over 10 years later, I’m still taking my meds and going to bed early most nights of the week and avoiding alcohol and exercising almost every single day. I no longer watch “Law and Order: SVU” or other shows that send me spiraling (thank goodness for “Ted Lasso” and “Abbot Elementary”), and I sure as shit have stopped constantly checking the news throughout the day.
The good news is that it works (most of the time). Don’t get me wrong — I still have anxiety. (Anyone who doesn’t in this current climate is either lying, on serious drugs, or an AI chat bot.) But worry is no longer my primary experience. I’m not as reactive and irritable as I used to be, and when I wake up in the middle of the night it’s because I have to use the bathroom. I can’t remember the last time I freaked out about paramedics tripping over a pile of shoes.
The reality is that anxiety sucks. But it can suck… less.
And if sharing my knowledge and experience will help other people feel better, then I’m all in. Which is why I’m happy to announce a new email series for Kveller called Calm-ish, specifically meant for Jewish people dealing with anxiety at this moment in time (redundant, I know).
Sign up for this free newsletter and join me as we’ll dig into all the details of what anxiety feels like, how it impacts our lives, and what, exactly, we can do to manage it. We’ll explore simple strategies for integrating evidence-based practices and Jewish wisdom in your daily life, and how and when to reach out for more help.
This series won’t make your life perfectly calm — more like calm-ish — but even that is a whole lot better than freaking out in the middle of the night. Ask me how I know.
Sign-up for our new email series, Calm-ish, here.
