When I return home from food shopping with a trunk full of grocery bags, I play a silly game, wherein I try to get all of the bags into the house in one shot.
First, I get out of the car, and unlock the door to the house. I can’t open the door yet, because if I do, the alarm will go off, and I will have to go inside, disarm it, and then come back out for the groceries. And, for whatever reason, I don’t want to do that in this game.
So I just leave the door closed. But unlocked. Then I head to the trunk of my car.
I use my right hand to pick up bags and slide the handles over my left hand. I load my left arm with 5 or 6 or 7 bags, but keep them resting on the floor of the trunk. I won’t pick them up yet.
Then, I shimmy 2 or 3 sets of handles up my right arm, all the way to the crook of my elbow. I grab the larger things, like laundry detergent, in my left hand. Then I lift it all up, take a step back, and bear down, as I lift my right arm up as high as I can, to close the trunk. Sometimes this takes a few tries.
Then I waddle to the house door with my heavy laden arms outstretched.
It is often a struggle to turn the doorknob and pull the door open. Especially on windy days, but I manage to open it. As soon as I do, the alarm begins its thirty second countdown.
Beep, beep, as I squeeze my way sideways through the doorway. Beep, beep, as I navigate the narrow entry landing, attempt to pivot, and climb slowly and carefully up the four steps to the closed kitchen door. Beep, beep. I stand, my body pressed up against the door, the bags pressed up against the walls on either side of me.
Beep beep, as I try to twist to the right, navigating the bulk of the bags. Beep beep, as I attempt to lift my right hand up to the alarm keypad. It is too high, the bags are too heavy, and now, the walls are closing in.
Beepbeep. How long do I have ? I have to let go of something. I have to lay down a bag or two, so I can disarm the system. My first attempt has failed. Beepbeepbeep.
I struggle to twist left and grab the doorknob. The bags sliding down my forearm and the handles pinching together at my wrist. Beepbeepbeepbeep. I open the kitchen door, and let the bags slip off of my arms with a thud and a thump.
Beepbeep. I’m not gonna make it. Beep. The alarm will go off and the police will be on their way. Beepbeep. Oh my god, now I have to pee! No time for that.
Beepbeep I turn around, beep, trying not to get my foot stuck, beep, in a bag handle on the floor. Beep. I press the code on the keypad but my finger slips on the last number. BEEP. I have to start again BEEPBEEP. The beeps seems to be getting faster louder, and I’m sure that the siren will sound above my head right now…BEEP…
Sigh, I enter the numbers correctly on the second try. I lean against the wall and catch my breath.
I did it! I carried it all in one shot! I am the winner of the game! I am The Carrier of All Things!
I could have entered the house first and cleared the alarm with no bags in my hands. I could have slowly and carefully and mindfully taken my time. I could have done a lot of things. But instead I played this silly stressful game that I play.
I have broken blood vessels on my forearms, bruised fruit, and squashed bread. And one of these days, I might not make it in time. When the police arrive, they will find me at the bottom of the steps, unconscious in the basement, covered in broken eggs and spilt milk while the alarm screams overhead.
We can try to carry all of the things, but at some point, the alarm is going to sound.
What are you carrying? What silly games are you playing? What can you put down?
Skip to My Lou, My Dharma 
This really resonates. Risking stress because it might meet a need for efficiency. We do this.
We think some of us use it to stay hypervigilant, as fuel to look out for danger. So it’s a strategy for safety.
We do it with cooking, often at breakfast. We feel bored and anxious with downtime while cooking and so we rush to complete small cooking tasks to fill the spaces.
But it feels stressful and produces anxiety. And most of us do not like that. And so we are trying to do less rushing. Do more prep before cooking. Try to notice when we’re holding breath and feeling urgent and endangered. Ease off. Self soothe.
We think we can make progress on this. It comes in cycles. Playing games, like card games, has the same effect on us: distresses. And only the safety monitor in us likes that. So we’re not playing. We don’t know how to play for fun without the fear and anxiety.
Not playing is our strategy for calm, peace. Need for fun isn’t met. Need for calm outweighing it right now. Safety also unmet. So feel vulnerable
What needs are you trying to meet with rushing/stress?
I used to talk about this with good friend of mine quite often. I think that growing up in a stressful/dangerous situation builds some sort of need for stress/danger. We called it ‘the buzz’. Maybe our calm regular lives are too calm for us to deal with, so we create stressful situations in order to bring us back to that stressful place where we learned to be ‘comfortable’. Just a theory…
We talked about this in therapy today, about creating stress as a strategy for safety. We want our inside people to choose a strategy for meeting the need for safety that meets everyone’s needs, as creating stress is not meeting everyone’s needs.
Some of us feel sick from stress, exhausted, depressed. We can’t meet needs for effectiveness, progress, presence, ease, peace, rest, perspective—safety—to always be creating stress, hypervigilance, to try to stay safe.
Safety for these us’s is about noticing stillness, peace, calm that is observable to our senses now. We invite hypervigilant us’s to notice the peace and calm that exists now. Can this be a strategy for safety: to notice what safe feels like? Can this meet everyone’s needs? Are us’s willing to try it? To breathe it in and notice the feelings and sensations?
This dialogue is meeting our need for contribution. Thank you.
We just had a conversation inside in which hypervigilant us’s said they fear the disappointment going from peace to worry. They would rather stay worried and vigilant to avoid the discrepancy—the fall—from peace to fear.
That makes sense to us! Unmet need is stability. Their strategy for stability is to stay wired, anxious, stressed, hypervigilant. We ask for a new strategy that will meet their need for stability and meet all our needs for stability.
Their practice, could we get used to surviving the change in mood state from calm to worry? Maybe it doesn’t meet needs for stability because it’s unfamiliar? Could experience allow the shift in moods to meet needs for stability?
Maybe but the need for stability with be unmet until then. We could use a bridge strategy. Do you have any ideas how to support worried us’s with practicing calm and allowing mood changes to worried?
I remember being so resistant to anything slow, like yoga or meditation. Because I didn’t like stillness. I believe now that it was a fear of peace. It was a strategy, like you said, to stay wired, anxious…hyper vigilant- I guess I thought hyper-vigilance was keeping me safe? Or maybe it was a fear of losing that peace again?
Practicing calm is hard because it requires letting the guard down.
Grounding practices are the best to start with I think. Sitting quietly. Feeling your feet on the ground. Feeling your breath. Hearing the sounds in the room. Being in this moment. No past. No future. Just this breath. This foot on the floor…
Right now I am breathing. Right now I am safe. Right now I am calm.
Practicing over and over until hopefully we can believe it.
We try it. Some of us like the feeling of calm, some panic, some are bored. We feel confused and annoyed and overwhelmed when this much is true at once. Noticing is not always restful. Want to keep trying to see what happens.