Most people, when faced with situations that are uncomfortable or that cause the slightest degree of anxiety, will shy away. They might try to distract themselves or make whatever is causing them pain less noticeable. They commit to useless activity, they perform ridiculous rituals, they take drugs to calm them when they feel so out of control that they cannot trust themselves to maintain composure. Not my son.
When he's afraid, feeling unsure or in a situation that causes his anxiety to rise, he dives in further. He refuses to be occupied with anything that doesn't fully immerse him in the exact condition that is causing his unrest. He needs to know more. He tries to think his way out of his discomfort. Can you imagine having the bravery to do the same? -Never mind the stamina that it takes to pay attention to something that you don't like for hours on end and until it's over? I cannot. I simply cannot. It's too easy to 'turn off' the conditions that I don't like. So much easier.
For a few years, I've watched him do this and wondered why he can't simply divert his attention. I have even asked him directly. He says, "I can't, Mom. I don't know why. I just can't."
Earlier this week just before boarding a flight bound for Milwaukee, my meteorologist son discovered that there was a tornado watch in the Wisconsin area. I have to admit that when I heard this news, even I was a little stricken. Other passengers in the waiting area for the same flight were likewise more than a little concerned - grown men! My much younger teenaged son doesn't handle bad weather well at home let alone asking him to endure the possibility of having to fly through it. In fact, flying is his least favorite mode of transportation with the exception of boating - which he flatly refuses to participate in. He was so nervous! And in order to deal with his anxiety, he spent the entire flight searching for information from any source possible - when necessary he consulted the same source multiple times. The fact that he'd already asked had nothing to do with the fact that he still didn't have enought information. He bothered all the flight attendants, the pilot, other passengers . . . he asked them all. "Are we okay?" "How is the weather in Milwaukee?" "Is this amount of turbulence normal?" "Have we stopped going up yet?" "Have we started the decent yet?" "How much longer is it?" He asked them all so many times - because you can never be sure when information will change. As well, people are unreliable as providers of factual information. He's right.
What he really would have liked would to have been able to check the FAA website, the NOAA website and the airline website to coordinate his own data. But it only would have eased his anxiety marginally. He still would have had to ask - over and over. Choosing instead to wrap himself in his hair shirt of potential travel disasters that would drive most of us mad.
He was really nervous, but not once did he lose his composure. Not once did he emit the slightest simper or wail. He spoke clearly. He was quiet. He was completely rational in the face of his greatest fear. Instead of breaking down or hiding within himself, he chose to become intimate with the very out-of-his-hands condition taking place around him thinking that if he were more familiar with what was making him anxious, the less there is attributable to the unknown. The same type of situation that most rational adults choose to pretend doesn't exist when faced with the same.
We are home now. The return flight was only less anxiety provoking because there was clear weather. There was still a flight or two in front of him. But the whole experience left me wondering which of us was the braver coward. The one in denial or the one trying so hard to understand what he can never know - when will something unpredicatable happen? Because it will somewhere, at some point, to someone.
Now . . . who's the one with the emotional disability?
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Impressive!
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