Feeling the (heart)beat

chefdorch8 Comments

Last night I woke up from a pretty wretched nightmare: I dreamt that I was scheduled for execution by drowning, and I was desperately calling and emailing and trying to figure out how I got myself into that situation and if there was some way to avoid dying.

Yeah, I know, Freud would have a field day with that, etc. etc.

Anxiety is more infectious than any virus, a virtual pandemic of its own. It’s a challenge for anyone to cope with in these fraught times, and even more so for those of us who struggle with our mental health.

When I ask my friends who don’t share these struggles to explain to me the physical manifestation of their anxiety, they’re most likely to described something like a knot in their stomach or a tightening of their chest – it sounds unpleasant, for sure, but somehow contained to one part of the body.

For those of us with anxiety and panic disorders, those sensations tend to be more all-encompassing. When my anxiety rises it feels like all of my nerve endings and every neuron in my brain are being zapped by static electricity. It’s not painful, just unbearable. And when that happens, for me, I know it’s only a matter of time until, like an engine turning, it can become a driving sense of panic.

I feel that I need to add the disclaimer that I’m not a doctor or a therapist, and I can only speak to my own experience. That being said there are some things I know are universal. When our thoughts are spinning and we are anxious, our heart rate increases. When we feel our hearts pounding faster, we become even more anxious. It’s a vicious feedback loop that makes us more and more anxious.

For myself, I can’t break that loop by changing my thoughts, but I can break it by changing my heart rate. Simple breathing exercises (4 counts in, 4 counts hold, 6 counts out) can slow down our breathing and eventually our heart. When our mind is in full anxiety mode but our body is not responding because one is trying to relax it, the feedback loop is broken.

For those times that I can catch anxiety before it gets too elevated, I play a game with myself. Wherever I am – at home, in an unfamiliar city, in a plane stuck on the tarmac – I make myself look carefully around my environment and pick out something that immediately grabs my attention. It doesn’t have to be profound or amazing, just something I notice – the color of a fluorescent pen on my desk, the shifting shadow of a tree in the wind, the pattern on the fabric of a chair. In those few seconds that I can focus on something else, I’m brought, in a simple but profound way, into the present. And when I’m present, the whirlwind in my mind immediately loses energy and I come back to myself.

A final thought – everyone is anxious right now; it’s difficult not to be. Maybe we’d be best served by leaning into anxiety, with the knowledge that as uncomfortable it may be, it’s something that we all share, and therefore connects us to each other. And that thought itself is enough to bring me a little calm.

One, two

chefdorch5 Comments

The first 24 hours of sheltering is place is nearly through, and to be honest, it hasn’t been too wildly divergent from what a normal day at home might be for me. When I’m traveling every week for work I’m usually home on Monday and Tuesday before heading out again, and I generally use the time to learn new music, take care of the administrative stuff (emails, contract approval), do laundry, go for a run. Which is basically what I did today.

For others, though, I imagine that transitioning from a physical workplace, with its built-in social interaction, to a solitary day of emails and conference calls from the kitchen table is disconcerting. Telecommuting may be common in other industries, but in the music industry, even the administrative part, it’s a bit of a new world. Friends in arts organizations across the country are recounting their discomfiture at the new normal as they try to negotiate this new model in a business that relies on interpersonal and in-person connection.

Pinkerton prefers in-person meetings

But here in San Francisco, the challenges of telecommuting have been further exacerbated by the fact that we can’t meet up with people at all, never mind at work. There are no happy hours, or lunches, or yoga dates, or running clubs, or religious services, no opportunity to interact with others face to face. For those of us who live with spouses/kids/families, we have at least some built in human time (although I imagine we’ll eventually start looking forward to spending some time apart!) For those living alone, however, the next 3 weeks looks pretty bleak.

It feels to me that, in this case, “one” and “two” don’t operate by the normal rules of mathematics; instead it feels a bit more binary – either you’re alone (1) or not alone (2+) (does that make sense at all? Sometimes my brain works in strange ways…) And I worry about my friends who live alone, who depend on their interactions with friends to fill that need for human contact.

The shelter in place order indicates that while people cannot gather for any reason, they can be outdoors for exercise, as long as they stay 6 feet apart. And so I invited a friend on her own to take a long walk with me through a park with me this afternoon, 6 feet apart. It felt a little strange, for sure, but the distance protects us and those around us, so we ambled, 2 yards apart, chatting, a respite from loneliness.

One can’t overstate the importance of social distancing in the current environment. But that makes finding ways to take care of each other within those constraints even more important. Humans are social creatures and not meant to live isolation; we thrive in each other’s company and we need to feel connected. So my question for today is:

What makes you feel connected to others? Does is require proximity, or touch, or just the knowledge that someone cares about you?

My task for the day: help someone feeling overwhelmed by our new normal feel less alone (done!).

Hoping that all of you are feeling connected. And know that as long as we are living through these challenging times together, you are not alone.

(PS I didn’t end up having that midnight champagne. I lay in bed eating peanut M&Ms instead. Hey, whatever makes you happy, right?)

So…this is weird…

chefdorch, , 11 Comments

It’s March 16 and everything is just nuts.

Any of us who were following international news had some inkling of what may have been just over the horizon – I have friends and family in Asia and I knew that major disruptions in everyday life were occurring and that people were afraid. But I can’t say that I even remotely imagined that what’s happened in the last few days would be my new reality, or that I had any idea how precarious life and livelihood would feel.

So, a little background. I’m a conductor (orchestra, not trains!) with a busy domestic and international career. As an independent contractor/guest conductor I’m not affiliated full time with any single orchestra, and my schedule is a complicated matrix of when an orchestra wants me for a performance and when I’m available.

Last Wednesday was the beginning of cancellations for gigs in Europe, then Canada, and, by last Friday, the States. At this point I’m not working for the next month, and it’s most likely that will extend for many more weeks, if not months. Conducting might seem like a glamorous career but basically I’m part of the gig economy – I don’t get paid unless I perform. I’m the major breadwinner in our family and our emergency savings will help for only so long. Like a lot of people out there, I’m scared.

I also live with a lot of mental health issues. Don’t worry, I’ll get into those over the next 21 days.

Tonight (or more accurately, tomorrow morning at 12:01 am) a “shelter in place” goes into effect here in San Francisco until April 7. Only essential businesses are open, all gatherings are forbidden, and people are required to stay in their homes except to get groceries and medication or to walk the dog (or themselves – I think this is going to be my lifesaver!) My husband and I had already done a preemptive Costco run last week for some shelf-stable basics – pasta, beans, tuna, olive oil, rice – so we weren’t in one of the snaking lines to get into our local grocery store. And as Californians we always have a level of emergency preparedness that most people who don’t live with the specter of a major earthquake wouldn’t understand.

Yeah that’s a bucket toilet all right

So I guess we’re ready to be stuck in our apartment for three weeks from a practical perspective. But I still can’t wrap my head around how that’s going to feel, and I’m trying to approach that uncertainty with curiosity rather than fear. Add to that the fact that I live with both depression and anxiety (managed by meditation and medication but still a struggle) and you’ll understand what a big ask that is of myself.

And I suppose that’s where this blog comes in. I’m doing this to put my fear and frustration out in the open, because I know so many of us feel the same way, and because writing helps me to sort through everything in my head with a certain calmness and clarity, both things that I need right now. And I’ve committed to posting every day, and part of that will be posing questions to you and setting tasks for myself.

So here’s my question for you today – how do you react to situations over which you have no control? Do you relax because there’s nothing you can do anyway, stress because you can’t do anything to change it, freak out because you don’t know what to do with yourself? Tell me everything.

My task today: start a blog. (done!)

I might stay up until midnight to crack a can of champagne as this shelter in place goes into effect, you know, just for irony’s sake. I’ll let you know tomorrow if I do…