I Hate Last Minute Changes

“Are you coming to bed already?” I said to my husband as he pulled back the quilt and crawled into bed.

“Yep, I am exhausted. Is that ok?” He said

“Sure!" I replied, trying to sound super laid back and welcoming. “If you are tired, you should sleep.” But internally, I could feel my anxiety rise.

My husband is a night owl, and I am an early riser, so we rarely go to bed at the same time. I am used to falling asleep alone in the bed because I can toss and turn without worrying about my husband. I can take up too much of the bed because he isn’t there, I give myself more freedom when he isn’t in the bed. So when he comes to bed before I fall asleep, I feel less free, my anxiety kicks in.

My husband fell asleep within minutes, and I lay there reading, waiting to be tired. (I want to say I was reading a book, but in reality, I was scrolling through news sites on my phone!)

Eventually, I rolled over, turned out the light, and laid there listening to my husband’s breathing. It didn’t take long before my Monger and BFF were arguing.

My Monger screamed, “Good grief, you are so uptight. You should be able to fall asleep. Why are you so rigid?”

Ok, I thought, relax your body. Name the 50 states (which is one of my go-to sleep hacks!) Well, that didn’t work.

My Monger chimes in, “I mean, how hard can it be to fall asleep next to the person you adore more than anything in the world?!?!”

But at that moment, I didn’t adore him every noise he made my BFF said, “Ugh, this is why you hate falling asleep when he is here! He is so annoying; listen to his breathing! You are never going to fall asleep with that racket!”

“Really?!? You are going to attack his breathing now. This is about YOUR rigidity, not his breathing!!” replied my Monger.

My anxiety was sky high, and I was debating giving up and going downstairs to watch TV, and then suddenly I heard from my Biggest Fan.

"Sweetpea, it's ok that this is hard for you. It doesn’t mean you are a bad person. It doesn’t mean you are selfish or don’t love your husband. You can toss and turn with him in the bed. Fall asleep like you usually do, give yourself some grace. You want your husband to sleep whenever he needs. Just relax, you can fall asleep. We can do this. Think of your favorite vacation and walk around that location." I thought about a trip my husband and I took to Washington state and eventually fell asleep.

A change in plans can send my anxiety sky high. One of the unhealthy ways I cope with my anxiety is to control as much as possible in my life. But controlling every aspect of my life isn’t realistic. Last-minute plans, a surprise phone call, a drop-by visitor (even if it is something or someone I want to spend time with) can make my anxiety spike. But rather than acknowledging that and giving myself grace too often, my Monger criticizes me for being rigid, and then my BFF steps in, and I lash out at whoever suggested the last-minute plans. And round and round they go.

This is an excellent example of the two layers of High Functioning Anxiety—on one layer, we have anxiety. To cope with that anxiety, we learned unhealthy/unhelpful coping skills, e.g., doing it perfectly, making everyone happy, controlling all aspects of our lives, etc.

We usually identify the coping skills as the problem. We decide to fix that layer, the coping skills, set better boundaries, be ok with imperfection, be less controlling. But when we take those coping skills away, we are just left with our anxiety. We have to work with both layers, the coping skills, and the anxiety. 

When our coping mechanisms become too strong and rigid, that is a sign that our anxiety is high. It isn’t a character flaw, as our Mongers would have us believe; it is a reminder that we need to address our anxiety. This means being kind to ourselves, building some self-loyalty, bringing in the Biggest Fan, and practicing A.S.K. 

I will probably still freak out next time my husband comes to bed early. But I will try to remember it isn’t a character flaw; it is my anxiety, and I will bring in my Biggest Fan to give myself some grace to move through it.