I am an admitted personality-type junkie. Guilty as charged. This summer Jason took the psuedo-Myers Briggs assessment and as a result for a month we geeked out on personality types, sharing Pinterest posts and reading type descriptions. We made all the rest of the #dirttherapycrew take the assessment. I had a great deal of joy watching Emily’s boyfriend sit in a corner with saucer eyes as he tried to figure out who had been spying on him in order to describe him so well. Cataloging everyone helps me understand them better. Honestly, I have always been that way. Organizing things, explaining them, finding descriptions and words that help make sense of emotions or experiences. I got a notebook titled “Lists” for Christmas one year– it was my favorite gift. #nerd

I think its because my internal world is always in disarray. Anyone who experiences anxiety on ANY level, clinical or situational, knows the level of rising chaos that can occur when your emotions and senses overload.

As a child and adolescent I built such thick walls and maladaptive coping mechanisms that I wasn’t even aware of a huge portion of my internal world. Almost everything was on internal lockdown. When I realized as an adult the level of empathy and roiling emotion that I had been violently shoving a tight, tight box so I would not lose my mind, it was scary. It is still scary.

When things feel out of control (which for me is 9.5 times out of 10), I can’t always promise those around me I will show up with my best self. A lot of times I don’t. Sometimes I show up silent and morose. Sometimes I behave in ways that I look at later and just absolutely cringe. I show up and lecture people and try to make lists and diagrams. I overanalyze every situation to its tiniest degree and try to establish my 10 different avenues for fixing it.

But I show up.

This is what I do better now than I ever have done before. Which isn’t saying much.

Sometimes showing up is all I can do. That is all you have to do. Keep showing up. Hoping that people will realize that me trying to engage, trying to be present, giving my best effort to just show up is everything at the moment.

I’m sure that sounds utterly ridiculous.

Yet for some people, being present and engaged in life IS THE WIN. I will give you an example.

A few weeks ago, Morgan, Moose, Jason and I went to the Oregon Coast.

After hitting a few favorite places in Newport (South Beach & the Oregon Aquarium) we drove up to Yaquina Head. There were time restrictions on our afternoon and we had some weird challenges with the parking lot and my internal self was in absolute CHAOS. Total chaos. I was stressing them out and I was stressing myself out, which was making me mad, because we were there to celebrate a special occasion and I was making it 10x worse because I wanted it to be perfect because that is just who I am. (PS: the length and twistiness of that sentence is precisely me. In a sentence.) Twice that day I had already had anxiety attacks. These get me going in a spiral that I can’t usually pull myself out of. But I was trying. I was showing up, good or bad… or just semi-decent, I guess.

So Jason parked, we braved the wind and walked around the corner and I caught site of the most most exquisite stretch of windswept, sparkling sea.

Y’all, I can’t even.

We walked down the long wooden stairs to the left of the lighthouse and stepped onto Cobble Beach.

The round, black and gray cool volcanic stones don’t just line the beach– they ARE the beach. Mounds and mounds of these pebbles hug the cliffs and ease out into the water where the rocky outcroppings jut above the waves.

I was staggered at the beauty. Comforted by the wind. Peaceful watching two of my favorite besties find joy in a beloved place. Content with the sun on my face, sitting on the rocks. We watched 9 sea lions a stones throw from us, bobbing in the water. Listening to the most unique music as the pebbles, pulled by the tide, make cascading sounds like an Aboriginal musical instrument. The first time I heard it happen, I jumped up and down like a little girl and said, “There it is, there it is!” #sidenote #howoldamI?

 

I’m not at peace very often. When I am, I am likely to be outside. It was magical, to say the least.

Since we drove away from Cobble Beach I have thought about it every day. Almost gotten in my car a couple of times just to drive out there on my own to sit with a cup of coffee and watch the sea dance and listen to the magical pebbles. (If you know me, then you know that the ocean is not my usual M.O. I’m a forest girl. It takes a lot to get me to use “magical.”)

For any of you who have anxiety, performance pressure or live with a chaotic emotional state 24/7 you may understand how hard it was to KEEP showing up and trying after having two anxiety attacks. I just wanted to go home. I wanted to crawl in a blanket and hide. I wanted to bury my face in Moose’s neck and cry and block everything out.

The thing I am slowly, slowly starting to learn is that experiencing those moments does not have to define me or my day. It used to be I would have those moments and not recover my equilibrium for days. Teaching my perfectionist self that its okay to meltdown and THEN SHOW UP AGAIN to whatever is in the present is ALLOWED.

Not only is it allowed, you may end up having experiences that transcend anything you imagined.

So forgive yourself. Surround yourself with people who allow you to fall apart or screw up or break down. Give yourself permission to feel what you feel. Locate even the tiniest part of courage you can see in that swirling mess of anxiety and chaos, dust yourself off and then show up again.

Just keep showing up. You might end up on Cobble Beach drinking in the sunshine, surrounded by family, listening to the song of the sea. Or you might freak out again a little while later.

And that’s still okay too. You are okay. Who you are is enough.

Peace, Love & Dirt-

Kaela Anne

 

COBBLE BEACH & the YAQUINA BAY STATE PARK, OREGON

I highly recommend! But I don’t recommend too loud ’cause I would also like to keep it a secret. #ichangedmymind #dontgotocobblebeach

• Drive HWY 101 into Newport, Oregon. Turn toward the ocean on Lighthouse Drive (look for the Izzy’s Pizza- it is hard to miss.) Here is a map.
• Admission to the Yaquina Bay State Park is $5.00. While there is parking by the lighthouse, I recommend you park in the first parking lot and take the path. You’ll see some breathtaking sites and the stairs to Cobble Beach are on your way.
• Don’t go near the sea lion pups if you see them and don’t get in between the sea lion pups and the water. Their mommas are there. I promise. Have you seen Animal Planet?!?!?!