In what area of your life do you find yourself needing to move forward, but stuck in place and anxious about taking action?
My bonus daughter, Sophie had the courage to overcome her fears this week, and I just can’t resist telling you about it, because even though hers are sixth-grade fears that might sound funny, this story just might get you unstuck from your own anxiety-producing situation.
“B-Mom,” I heard Sophie call pitifully from upstairs while I was eating my breakfast tortilla and enjoying a glass of orange juice at the kitchen table. It was around 7:30 am and Jeff had left to take Addie to school while Sophie stayed in bed late because of a morning dental appointment.
“Yes,” I responded.
“I just threw up,” she said. Normally this would alarm me, but I was kinda anticipating it.
“Oh, sweetheart, that’s terrible,” I said. “I think you’re just anxious about getting your teeth pulled. Lie back down and I’ll be up in just a minute.
“No. No, I’m not anxious about that,” she insisted, her voice sounding suddenly stronger. “And I’m coughing. Oh, the coughing. I think it is getting worse.”
Let me put this in context. My husband asked me at 10:30 the night before if I’d take her to the dentist because I might be able to use my life coaching skills to help calm her anxieties. It was the third attempt in the last year to get two baby teeth pulled that never came out naturally. The first two ended in minor panic attacks and a trip back home, teeth un-pulled.
When I went upstairs, I found Sophie in bed, a wet face cloth draped across her forehead, eyes just droopy enough to look weary.
“You’re a tough cookie, Sophie. You know how I talk about resilience all the time? You’re resilient. Let me ask you something,” I continued. “What is the thought you are having about getting your teeth pulled that makes you feel so afraid? Are you scared of how painful you think it will be?”
“No, that’s not it,” she said. “First of all, I’m scared they’ll make me swallow a pill.” She hates to swallow pills.
Confused by her admission, I assured her it was highly unlikely she’d have to swallow a pill for anesthesia.
She looked reluctantly convinced, like she was sizing up my credibility on the matter. “What else are you afraid of?” I asked.
“Well,” she sighed. “I’m afraid I’ll end up swallowing a tooth when it’s pulled.”
I kept myself from chuckling. “Swallow your tooth?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’m pretty sure the dentist will maintain control of your tooth at all times. I bet a 100 people up and down the East Coast have already had teeth pulled this morning, and none of them, I mean none, have swallowed a tooth! You are not going to swallow your tooth. So is this all you’re scared of?”
“Well, there’s one more,” she explained. “What if he pulls the wrong tooth?”
“He’s a professional, Soph. He went to school for years to learn how to do this. In fact, if he pulls the wrong tooth, you swallow a tooth, or they attempt to get you to swallow a pill, I’ll write you a check for $5,000! That’s how confident I am none of it will happen. (I admit I was 99% confident, but after I randomly said $5,000, I felt a fleeting moment of fear myself…).” She stared at me to gauge my seriousness about the check and laughed just a little.
As unexpected and funny as these fears sounded to me, they were real in her 11-year old mind. But I was pretty excited because they weren’t fears that were likely to actually happen. By calling them out and challenging them one by one, she could overcome them.
Her fears are no different from my fears or even yours. Oftentimes the stuff that causes us anxiety is highly unlikely to ever happen. While we imagine irrational scenarios the equivalent of swallowing a tooth at the dentist’s office, we work ourselves into anxiety and the result is paralysis. We make ourselves sick with worry, so sick in fact, that we don’t move forward. Even when our fears aren’t irrational, it does no good to meditate on them.
I asked Sophie to intentionally shift her thoughts to what it would look like to have courage in the situation. She closed her eyes and I saw a calm and confidence in her face.
“Remember when I finally went down the big, winding slide at the pool?” she said about a year-long, anxiety-ridden journey to get her to join her friends and sister and her dad and me on the fun slide at our neighborhood pool. It wasn’t that bad once I did it.”
After that stateme
nt, I heard nothing else about her fears.
We headed to the dentist’s office and she even joked around before they wheeled her away for the procedure. My husband and I sat in the waiting room, and about ten minutes after Sophie had left the room, a nurse came and handed us a tiny red box with two long-overdue baby teeth in it.
Mission accomplished.
My challenge to you:
Shine a light on the thoughts that are causing you anxiety and challenge them.
Coach yourself:
What are my worse-case scenario thoughts? What is the likelihood of them actually happening? When was a time when I felt anxious, but I overcame it and moved forward? What did I do then that I need to do now?
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