When Small Problems Loom Too Large |
What Does "Self Help" Mean?
Take our Self-Esteem Test
Find a therapist near me
Minor issues can sometimes seem to dominate one's life.
Investigating problems rather than venting about them can often reveal their true meaning.
Free association and memory exploration can help one to understand a problem's underpinnings.
Sometimes, big emotions come into play with some small practical problem too inconsequential to mention—and yet you find yourself mentioning it all too often. To friends who are starting to roll their eyes. To colleagues who change the subject. You sort of know you’ve given the issue too much weight for what it is, but you have no idea why it’s in the forefront of your mind.
Let’s say you’re dealing with the remnant of a back injury that’s left you unable to forward bend. Not really a big deal. Yet it feels like it’s rattled the foundation of your life. Without help, which you don’t have since you live alone, you can’t even put on your socks or tie your shoes without pain. And on it goes.
Maybe a piece of your mail was stolen from the post box, and that’s turned into identity theft. Try complaining to people with real problems, like making ends meet or fighting cancer, or to your therapist, how having to write to identitytheft.gov six times a day is driving you crazy.
For me, the small and obviously solvable problem was staying warm, especially inconsequential because I live in Southern California. No matter, since my Reynaud’s syndrome suddenly dropped into the danger zone. When the capillaries leading to my fingers and toes spasm, stopping blood flow, my extremities can freeze, even on a sunny 50-degree day. Last year, one of my toes got so cold, it turned a minor abrasion into an ulceration. I ended up going to a wound care clinic for a month, shuffling through life in fuzzy slippers when walking at all.
Still, should I be thinking about Reynaud’s constantly? Sure, it takes time and understanding on the part of my friends and relations. No, I can’t meet at that lovely outdoor restaurant because heat lamps don’t warm your feet. And I’m so sorry, I have to cut this visit short because it’s too cold in your house (although I’m the only one who thinks so). The paraphernalia is embarrassing—battery-heated gloves, toe warmers, arctic boots—important, however, it’s not. I know that. Still, Reynaud’s had begun to dominate my internal life. Not to speak of my social and marital life, as my husband told me.
Thinking Psychoanalytically
This is when thinking psychoanalytically helped. Instead of venting about the problem, I examined it. Gradually, I realized that my sudden temperature dysregulation frightened me, as well as making me feel out of sync with myself. I saw how I had somehow lost my equilibrium because of it, as if the door of my emotions had been ripped open and jumbled feelings were gushing out.
As uncomfortable as that recognition felt, it was revelatory. I understood that the problem loomed so large because it exposed a vulnerability in me. Someone else might address their Reynaud’s mechanically: Fix this, do that. Why didn’t I? Maybe, I concluded, because it held meaning for me. Figuring out what that was took some rumination and free association.
I remembered when I was quite small, reading Freddy the Penguin. Freddy wore a muffler, mittens, and a woolen hat and always stood close to the wood-stove on his ice floe. This is the only children’s book I remember, obviously because Freddy was moi—the first character I identified with. His being cold separated him from the other penguins and finally took him to the tropics, where he could keep warm. Hmm? Memories started to ripple: shivering as I waited on the streetcorner for the bus to school, my galoshes filling with snow and my mind with the worry that I would freeze to death. Being afraid to go outside when my cousins seemed not to mind the biting wind or even sleet that they liked to fling at one another. My mother could walk the frigid winter streets of New York City in high heels and stockings. If she thought at all about my whining, she wished I would toughen up enough to look glamorous, the way she did, which I most definitely did not in the woolen hat pulled low to my eyes and my muffler pulled up over my mouth and nose. In so many ways, I was the wrong child for that mother and those winters.
What Does "Self Help" Mean?
Take our Self-Esteem Test
Find a therapist near me
I never did follow in my mother’s footsteps. Fortunately, I had Freddy in my unconscious. Like him, I finally accepted who I was and would never be. I migrated to an environment where I could thrive, at least physically, and that was a start. That is, until Reynaud’s threatened to prove me wrong. My joke to myself was that now I’ll have to move to the tropics. But really, I worried that I might not fit in anywhere, a sense of belonging being the real issue.
Such a small problem, staying warm. Yet, as I discovered, it had meaning for me. It took me back to the panic I felt as a child who didn’t fit where I was. Just knowing that calmed me. The upside of experiencing such disproportionate reactions may be the chance it offers to discover something more about who you are, and aren’t. If you ask the right questions. Instead of obsessing, I began to notice how, since simply staying warm had become a project for me, I saw what it takes to live fluidly and marveled at the miracle of doing so. What had taken place unthinkingly before I now had to parse out in all its steps and requirements. When had I ever investigated what it takes for a body to stay warm? Never. And now I did, all the time. When things don’t work, they require that we become minutely aware of them, which turned out to feel like a valuable gift.