Know your Triggers

Last week I passed my six-month post-ACL-surgery checkup and am officially cleared to twist and pivot again! It might not sound like much, but after months of immobility and very limited mobility, knowing my body is pretty much back to normal and ready to stretch, bend, and move means a lot. 

That same week, I tweaked my back and found myself unable to stretch, bend, or move as I recovered. It wasn't "a big deal," and I was confident my back would recover, yet at the same time the injury profoundly affected me. I was thrown right back into the deep sadness of six months ago when the coping skills I had developed over the past years were all ripped away. I couldn't bike, walk well, or work out. I even had to be careful at yoga. I felt helpless and a little hopeless. 

As I walked (carefully) into my orthopedic surgeon's office, my brain finally connected these two experiences. My disproportionately sad response to tweaking my back made sense - it triggered memories of months of difficult recovery and some pretty depressed weeks, and I realized I was holding onto a lot of dread. 

Recognizing that this relatively small incident was triggering helped me recognize and normalize what could have felt like an overreaction. My body and mind weren't overreacting - they knew that being immobile like this was hard on me and were reacting reasonably to another round of hard feelings. Fortunately, I knew cognatively that this injury was very different than my knee and would have a very different recovery arc. And that took some of the edge off of the big feels. 

It's tricky to recognize your triggers, and oh so powerful when you do. Knowing your triggers gives context to your physical and emotional reactions, and it gives you something to work with beyond the vague feeling that you're spinning out.

What areas of life to you tend to "overreact" at? Can you detect if those "overreactions" are similar to a very difficult, scary, or life-altering situation you experienced in the past? What could it look like (to work with a trained professional) to help to heal from that original difficult time rather than simply managing your triggers and reactions? 

This is the work I love as a therapist - we can always heal. Sometimes it just takes a little similar injury for us to see the trigger and find its root.

Europe Recap

We recently returned from almost two weeks in Europe, and I thought I'd record the highs, lows, and "buffalos" (surprises) of the trip before it recedes too far into memory. This trip wasn't on our radar at all in January and was catalyzed by WanYing winning a place on the US National Paraclimbing Team in February. So now we're doing a surprise world tour to attend Paraclimbing Worlds competitions (it's the World Cup of climbing). What a delight!

Highs

• 
  WanYing winning her category at Worlds! She had stiff competition in her category, left qualifiers in first place, and emerged on top! Since it was the whole reason we were in Europe in the first place, it seems like winning should be at the top of our list of highs. If you missed her climb, check it out here (starts at minute 41) - it's amazing! 
• 
  Hanging out with Laura and Pau in Valencia. Since we were going to be in the neighborhood (the competition was in France, and all European countries are basically next-door neighbors), we decided to begin our trip in Spain. Our connection to Laura goes back as long as our connection to WanYing - Laura was a high school student who sponsored a Chinese baby in an orphanage nutrition program. That baby became our daughter, and we have stayed in contact ever since! This was the first time we visited Laura and Pau in Spain, and it was wonderful. They took such good care of us, and we are still a little wistful for the plates of jamon iberico and fideua (paella, except with noodles instead of rice and seafood instead of rabbit). 
• 
  Mont Saint-Michel. We ended up with a spare day in central France and drove to Mont Saint-Michel. An abbey and medieval city that took over an island that, once upon a time, you could only get to at low tide - it lived up to the hype. 

Lows

• All the peeing in the street in Paris. I mean, come on.
• Norman food. It turns out, we are not made for Norman food. Steve says I should have known what I was signing up for when the English translation on the menu said "pig parts." He was right. The "best" one on the plate was the smoked tongue sausage, which tells you everything you need to know.
• 
  Vending machine pizza. When we were in France a few years ago, Steve became enamored with vending machine baguettes. We found a machine, but it was out of commission for the month of August because its supplies were on vacation (ah, Europe), so we followed Google Maps to what we thought was another. It turns out that it was a pizza vending machine, and we figured we had come this far; we might as well get two (this was a huge mistake). We sort of finished one. It was not good, but it was memorable.

Buffalos

• 
  The Banksy museum in Paris. This was a little spur-of-the-moment excursion that ended up making our highlight reel. It's always fun when you get surprised by something random and fun. 
• 
  The Paris Catacombs. We definitely didn't know what we were signing up for, and the whole experience was memorable and disturbing (so many similarities with Norman food). It turns out that 10 million people were exhumed from their graves in the 18th and 19th centuries, and their bones were moved into the catacombs, which were originally tunnels left over from limestone quarries under the city. It's a sobering experience to walk the almost two kilometers of hallways lined so densely with bones. It's solemn and lovely and weird. Definitely memorable.

We had an amazing trip - we cycled through Paris, went to a macaron-making class, went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, wandered in the Louvre, cycled 20 km (and back!) to a castle, ate snails, swam in the Mediterranean Sea, admired Paris from the top of the Arc du Triomphe, walked through Valencia, painted on the banks of the Seine, and marveled at the stained glass of Saint-Chapelle and Notre Dame. 

Now to start planning for WanYing's next competition - Korea and Japan, here we come!

Celebrating Long-term Goals

I've been reading Big Time, the latest book from my very favorite "productivity expert," Laura Vanderkam. It's a great read, and one of her suggestions for savoring and expanding one's experience of time is to set long-term goals that feel rewarding, take minimal effort each day, and build toward something big and celebratory. As I read about this strategy and felt energized about goals I could set for 2027, it occurred to me that I was already doing this with my year-long habit tracker. Still, it hadn't paused to complete my explanation by describing the celebration step! 

Maybe you can relate to my trouble here - I focus on the hard work and "how good it is for me," but I forget about the celebration that could cap off the whole experience and leave me feeling rewarded and delighted. So let's right that wrong and set aside time to celebrate!

This year, I am taking time to log each time I engage in one of the fourteen habits I decided to focus on. These are activities that generally leave me feeling happy with my day, such as working out, yoga, and journaling. Each time I engage in one of these activities, I add a square of the corresponding color to my tracker. 

But wait, there's more! Not only do I get to celebrate the habits I engage with each day with my special box of crayons, but I also decided to indulge in a special knitting project to celebrate this year. I'm making a Celebration Scarf! 

I'm only a quarter of the way through, and it's already a fun, funky celebration of my year of great habits. Each habit has its own yarn associated with it, and I use my habit tracker to determine the color repeats - so the scarf pattern follows my habit patterns!

I was thinking of my Celebration Scarf as a continuation of the habit-tracking project, but with Laura Vanderkam's help, I'm reframing it: my scarf is a cumulative celebration of all the beautiful habits I am focusing on this year!

What's a big project or big goal that you're working on that deserves a little (or big) celebration? Would planning a celebration boost your motivation and commitment to that goal?