Rhythms and Routines, or – Is My “Exact Change Gene” Showing?

Life has certain rhythms, and I have long been a person who enjoys embracing my routine, tweaking my routine, inserting personal bits and challenges to change-up my routine, occasionally upending it altogether and starting over fresh. It can be fantastic (though also sometimes scary) when changes to life’s rhythms are personally driven. For instance, I took on a Jen-Sincero-Bad-Ass approach to publishing last year and the results were/are exhilarating. When I decided at the age of twenty-seven to leave my job and try on full-time parenting as a gig, it was a bit terrifying, but resulted in one of the most satisfying and personally growth-filled periods of my life (never mind the growing of kids, which was also rewarding).

But sometimes we don’t get to make those choices about the changes to our rhythms and routines. Occasionally one falls down the stairs, as I did quite literally in 2006, and everything you believe about yourself changes. Or a plague comes along, just as an example, and you find your routines spiraling out of control.

When R and I moved to Houston, I almost immediately began having difficulty sleeping. I would lie down in bed and begin to immediately wonder if I had locked the door to the apartment. I would get up to check the door, find that it was locked, and go back to bed. I would lie there for a bit and begin to wonder, had I already checked that the door was locked? Was it possible that I was remembering checking the door the night before and that I had, in fact, failed to check that the door was locked? And so I would get up to check that the door was locked again.

Gratuitous cute pup photo to
help spread the smiles.

In my favorite psychology course in college (abnormal – isn’t that everyone’s favorite?) I remember getting the giggles one day as I began plotting the extremes of the personalities of my friends and family to their most dysfunctional extremes. Because that’s both the beauty and curse of psychology, right? Things that we all experience and feel, become personality markers, and conditions or tendencies that may come and go, and for a few, full-blown extremes of debilitating proportions.

Psychology student that I was (or perhaps it was just my farm girl roots that taught me the solution to most problems was within me), I began to examine my “did I lock the door” behavior and ask myself, 1) when does this become a problem, and 2) what is triggering this behavior?

My solution was eventually two-fold. First, I began keeping a stack of hairbands at the door to the apartment. When I locked the door, I would slip a hairband onto my wrist, and when I was in bed and begin wondering if I had locked the door, I’d snap the hairband to remember that it was real and I had, indeed, locked the door. The second thing I eventually did was to stop watching the nightly news, a habit I had from my father, something that seemed to me to be necessary as an adult living in the world. I began to realize that the nightly news in Houston stressed the *lucky duck* out of me. Living in a metropolitan area that was larger than my entire home state of Kansas meant that the picture painted nightly on the evening news was very, very different than the one I had grown up with. I still vividly remember stories from our first few months in Houston, including a child that was abducted from a home and murdered on “our side” of town (it was miles and miles away, in a different city-entity… but in my mind northwest meant too-near me). One night, I remember the news anchor declaring that it had been a good day in Houston with not one stabbing, shooting, car wreck mangling, or death. That was my eye-opening moment. I turned off the television and began reading the newspaper, where I could skip over the headlines that triggered my “is the door locked” behavior, yet still feel informed. Eventually, the stack of hairbands became a simple convenience that I could grab to tie my hair up as I was headed out the door.

Through my late teens and early twenties, I had a developing hyper-thyroid condition, which I now believe also contributed greatly to my hairband on the wrist episode. When the body is in a constant state of fight or flight, the mind tends to look for reasons to support the accelerated heartbeat. The nightly news was feeding me an ample supply of evidence that I should be concerned about locking my door. I had half of my thyroid surgically removed at the age of twenty-four and immediately gained a whole new calm and perspective.

 More than a decade later, a time of blissfully embracing the rhythms of life and glorifying in my routines, I had an event (the above-mentioned stair fall) that put me on a path that eventually led to a number of less-than-healthy routines. Unfortunately, this round it took me much longer to identify and take action against the behaviors that were beginning to control me more than I was controlling them. I did not become agoraphobic, but I could certainly see it from where I stood. And I began to understand OCD on a level far deeper than my college textbooks ever showed me.

Most of my friends and family will be surprised if they are reading this. Or maybe they are nodding their heads, seeing it now--the must-be-the-last-to-use-the-bathroom Tracy, the she’s-never-going-to-let-you-drive Tracy, the must-pay-using-exact-change Tracy. I’ve never had the ability to share the things that make me feel weak as they are happening, only later, and often then only through writing or in intimate conversations with people I really trust.  

It wasn’t until the rolling panic attacks began hitting that I forced myself to stop and reassess the way I was living and take action to change it. They were terrifying. I would feel them coming on and had only minutes to prepare myself. It was like being consumed by an ocean wave. My body would break out in sweat, begin violently shaking, and then the tears would come. I had never experienced sobbing like that, not even when my mom was dying. I used all the breathing and meditation techniques I had picked up in my youth while dealing with a hyper-thyroid, but they wouldn’t stop.

I eventually figured out that lack of sleep was at the heart of my issue, and I wasn’t sleeping because of damage that had been done to my upper back and shoulder in the fall. The bruises on my butt had been so extreme, I hadn’t stopped to consider how the rest of my body had been affected.

This isn’t to dwell on my history of behavioral extremes, but to say (yes, as it is happening) that I feel my “exact change” gene showing. As I imagine do many of you.

Paying for groceries with exact change has—off and on through the years—been one of my challenges. For the positive, it’s great for budgeting, making me feel in control of money when I am attempting to hit financial goals. There have been moments in my life, however, when I’ve found myself fishing through my coin purse, my pockets, the bag on my shoulder, determined not to break a dollar bill when I look up and recognize the look of exasperation on the face of the clerk. That’s when I know I’m crossing the line. My quest for exact change has become a hindrance rather than a help. I did it at the grocery store, my one trip last week. My heart began to race as I searched for exactly seventy-three cents, while my fist was full of dollar bills.

These are stressful times we are living in. These are trigger-inducing times for the psyche, and I would expect that even those of you who have rarely ventured on this path of behavioral extremes (at least those you dare to recognize) are seeking coping mechanisms at the moment.

This is my 14,000 word way of saying—it’s okay. You are going to be okay. You may have to resort to snapping yourself with a hairband at night or disinfecting your doorknobs routinely with aplomb. Yes, your hand-washing routine may be feel like it’s becoming a major operatic production. You may be longing (like me) to tackle-hug friends and acquaintances with whom you’ve barely shared a handshake until now. (Oh, the horror, what is this world coming to?)

I leaked tears on at least four separate occasions yesterday, and my centered-self couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation for any of it. Well… except for the plague and all. But you know, what’s a little social distancing for a solitary-loving girl like me?

It’s appropriate to have messy feelings right now. And it’s appropriate to come up with some creative behavioral modification techniques if that’s what it takes to get you through. Just don’t delay my grocery checkout by digging for exact change. That’s all I’m asking. Pay your bill and get a move on. I’ve got a decontamination routine to accomplish once I am through here.

No really, we’ll get through this. (Write it again, make it true.) We will get through this.

And maybe we will pick up some beneficial coping mechanisms along the way, and may those that are not beneficial for long-term use fall away naturally and gracefully as our “new normal” begins to evolve.

Sending love and light.