On Dropping Anchor

A Note on Drifting, Quick Fixes and Learning to Stay

During a boat ride home with friends, the engine cut out. We were left adrift, trying to restart it, none of us entirely sure of what had happened, and none of us knowing what to do to remedy the situation either. A place I have come to know all too well.

We weren’t in any danger, we were only about 10m from shore within the calm of Lamu’s main channel, but still, there was a feeling of panic. The current was strong, where were we going to end up? How were we going to restart it? What if we couldn’t? The energy rose as it does when fear creeps in, the pitch increased and it became harder to make clear decisions.

This sense of drifting and powerlessness is one that has become frustratingly familiar to me in the last 18 months. From having to resign from what I thought was my dream job after being completely and utterly burnt out, to losing my husband to suicide a few months later, I’ve become unnervingly used to things being firmly taken out of my control and spent much of my time since wading through life on autopilot lost in disassociation.

I’ve been trying to cover up how I feel, not necessarily all that consciously, but as a matter of survival. I power through, busy myself with work, and drown out the noise of my mind with podcasts. The numbness has become a place of safety where I don’t have to face myself and all my tangled, messy emotions.

And then someone dropped the anchor. We made a connection to the ground. And all of a sudden, everyone was able to think more clearly.

We were no longer drifting, no longer powerless, we’d reclaimed some agency by simply connecting with the ground beneath us. We were able to take a breath and retain some sense of calm, even if we still didn’t know how we were going to get the engine going again.

While everyone else did what they could do to get the engine going again, I outsourced. I’ve become so used to being neither here nor there that I wanted to be somewhere when I was trying to get home. While I couldn’t control my emotions, flashbacks, or panic attacks, I knew I could control this situation and I wanted out quickly. I picked up the phone to get someone to come and help us who knew far better than all of us combined — much to our chagrin, with one pull of the starter rope the engine was back to life again.

Was this me looking for the quick fix, just like the distractions of work and podcasts? I didn’t want to be sitting in this discomfort any longer than I needed to, so I made a call and found an easy way out, one that meant I didn’t have to do any of the heavy lifting.

But here’s the thing about quick fixes, they don’t really fix anything, not for the long term anyway. By outsourcing this problem and having it fixed so simply, what did we learn for next time?

I wonder what I’ve learnt from the quick fixes too? On the outside I can seemingly have it all together, but I’m trapped inside constantly patching up the cracks with tissue paper and PVA glue. But the cracks keep appearing in the form of panic attacks, crippling flashbacks, and endless insomnia. My theory — and the one echoed by every well wisher around me — that things will get better in time, doesn’t seem to be working. Instead, these symptoms only seem to be interrupting my life more and more.

I’m choosing not to live like this any longer. I’ve found a new therapist specialising in EMDR, trauma and a heap of other things that I don’t need to list here, who could help me to move this trauma out my body, someone to help me feel like I’m living my life, instead of walking around in some kind of dream state.

This is going to be the opposite of a quick fix, it’s going to be work. It’s going to take me diving in deep to uncover and process trauma stuck in my body so that I can stop drifting and start living in the present again.

And honestly, the thought of doing this fills me with fear. I feel like I’m straddling the choice of living to patch up the cracks or fully replaster trying to figure out which is the lesser of two evils. As if choosing unexpected uncontrollable terror is better than a designated time to digest it.

In fact, since I’ve been in contact with my new therapist before even starting the work, my flashbacks have become so bad I’m scared to walk through the town I once lived in with my husband for fear I’ll end up in the toilet of the bank having a panic attack, again.

Is this a precursor to just how difficult it’s going to be? Am I going to now pay for the ‘pleasure’ of reliving the worst day of my life over and over in the hope that it will fix me and resolve all my problems?

There’s a part of me that wants to just put my ear buds back in, to dive right into a new podcast series in the hope that those well wishers are in fact right, and that actually not enough time has passed yet — another thing they like to chime in with. But what I’m unable to communicate is that the last 15 months of my life have felt like an age, while also feeling like a flash. Thanks to the vividness of my flashbacks, I literally feel as if I’m reliving fragments of that day again over and over.

But what can I do? Remain frozen in this heightened stress state chained within my mind, fearful of walking down the street. Or begin to move through it all with the faith that this is going to move the dial. Even just a fraction would feel like a win right now.

In our first session, she reminded me of the importance of anchoring, of grounding in the present instead of drifting off in a memory or anxiety. I saw how that played out in reality and it worked. It was a sweet reminder that we don’t always have to be drifting through the hard stuff, hoping that we can ignore it until it goes away. Instead we can take a breath to feel the ground beneath our feet and plant ourselves firmly in the here and now.