Season 1, Episode 31: Danielle and Maggie speak with Jill Dyer on anxiety, panic and attachment styles

Jill Dyer is a writer, editor, story coach, poet, narrative trauma practitioner, mother, wife, and is on the Allender Center team.

Danielle begin with checking in with Jill during COVID: Jill has many hats that she wears and finds herself navigating school online with her four kids at home, while she and her husband are both working.  She notices that she sees what’s going on with them and tries to fit her self and her projects in wherever she can... But it’s not always easy. Jill finds it is difficult to find space to work without interruptions during this season.

Maggie agrees; regular life has been so disrupted that she wonders how we will be able to do everything we did before, having so much “quantity time” not necessarily “quality time.” Things are just different and emotions are high! 

Jill agrees emotions are all over the place; “Everyone is in a different spot every day. We are not all on the same page.” She says it’s hard to fill the gap when someone isn’t doing well. She asks, “How do you manage or tend to the gap of people not being at their best with kindness?”

Danielle had awoken the last few days feeling like “I gotta get this done. I gotta get this done….” before she really stopped and asked herself, “What is it that I need to get done?” And she couldn’t think of anything that needed to be done. Through talking to Jill on the phone, they came to this idea of a sense of panic that is happening for many people right now. 

Jill says she is the type of person who can hold a lot of anxiety in her body without even knowing it. She believes that to be part resiliency, part survival and part not helping at all, all mixed together. Jill gives us a snapshot of a story where she and her daughter went out on a beautiful day to do a bit of hiking down by a river. The water was moving pretty fast and she felt like “eh, I don’t want to do this,” yet she ahead went anyway. As she got about a third of the way across the river all of a sudden her legs started to shake and she couldn’t move. Her daughter was all the way across now and looking at her. Jill could not get her legs to move! Finally her daughter came back to and asked her if she was okay to which Jill replied, “I don’t think so.” Her daughter suggested that she scooted on her butt back across the river. Her daughter said, “I’ve never seen you like that.”

Jill acknowledged she had never felt that way before. She began to try to put words and explain to her daughter, “I’m not normally like that. I think all of the things that are going on are held in my body more than I’ve known.”

This was a loud signal to her that she is holding the collective panic of her family, of herself, of our nation, of our world. And she is working really hard to be kind to herself in the midst of all of this and STILL she is at the edge of panic. 

Maggie felt terror just listening to Jill’s story – panic, not being in control of your body, sense of urgency and overwhelming fear of not knowing what’s happening. Maggie loved how Jill engaged her daughter in the midst of it, offering more than just “I’m fine.” Maggie noted that her daughter was clearly aware that something was happening and Jill took the time to tell her “I think I am holding more than I can carry” in a way that wasn’t asking her daughter to carry it for her (placing the burden on her daughter.” Maggie wondered what was it that helped Jill to calm down and reengage her body again?

As Jill was lying in the sun, she kept reaching over and touching granite rocks, feeling the warmth. It was the stability and grounded-ness of the rock that was really soothing to her in that moment. It wasn’t actually until she wrote the whole story out, spent time walking and listening to worship music, that she was able to feel regulated again. But even then she knows she is in a more heightened place than normal. 

Danielle notices the same for herself—she’s been taking it easy on herself during her workouts but she finds herself gasping for breath at times, as opposed to regular shortness of breaths that she experiences in a workout. “Our bodies in a sense are in protest of all that we have to hold. And it’s not like we can give away all that we’re metabolizing for our children.” We have to hold it and be kind and find a way to soothe ourselves all at the same time. 

Jill said it wasn’t easy to tell her daughter what was happening. She felt embarrassed and she didn’t want it to happen. She wonders if just showing our kids who we really are is a safe way forward; We’re not asking them to carry it we’re just letting them see it. It’s more honoring as a family to see it, rather than one person overcompensating. 

Maggie said the environment she grew up in her parents were untouchable and they didn’t have to say sorry, they didn’t’ have to offer an explanation. “It feels like I didn’t really know them in the way that your daughter will know you.” Sometimes there aren’t words for what’s happening and merely offering that you don’t know what’s happening, is allowing your child to see you. 

Jill says, “It’s really hard to attach to people you don’t know.” 

Danielle remarks the weightiness of that statement, especially so in light of this season where we are with people non-stop. The thought that you could be with someone and not know them. 

Attachment Styles play out in the way we engage others.

Jill can feel her own propensity towards being more avoidant, to move away. She said there is some kindness there: “I don’t have to become a whole healed person to be known.” “But I do have to be aware of what I am doing, coaxed myself back, to ask the Lord to coax me back, to being near those that I love.”

Maggie acknowledges that she also moves away when it’s “too much,” when things get stressful or out of control and she asks Jill what it looks like to coax herself back, or be coaxed back, when she feels the urge to move away. 

Jill says, “Sometimes it’s small. It’s just sitting for a few more minutes at the dinner table when you kinda wanna getting up. Or asking the next question. Or just looking at one of the kids as their walking by and thinking ‘what would be like to be them today?’” It’s small movements because if we force ourselves to do really big things then we get overwhelmed and we don’t have staying power. But if we can just ask ourselves to do the next thing and be empowered to do that thing. It’s small. 

Danielle agrees, being in this time at home it is the small things that count so much. “It’s the look that you don’t return… It’s a comment from your teenagers that I don’t respond to but instead choose to give grace to…”

Jill asks Maggie if panic shows up in her life and what that looks like. 

Maggie tells about taking her three kids Ireland two years ago… Her mother was supposed to be joining them on the trip for man-to-man coverage: three kids three adults. Major health concerns came for her step-dad that led to her mother not being able to go on the trip. Maggie and her husband decided they were still going to go to Ireland and she was totally fine until they got on the plane. They made it through security, all the luggage, the three kids boarding the plane. “As soon as we sat down in the back of the plane… I’m looking forward and I’ve got two of my kids sitting with me and my husband is across the aisle with the other one and I felt like I was going to hurl my guts out.” A wave of panic rushed over her and she had this deep feeling of, “What have we done?! We’re going to be trapped on this plane for ten and half hours…” She said she had never felt more afraid.  Maggie, like Jill, acknowledge that this kind of panic is not quickly recovered from. She said should couldn’t just will it to be over. She breathed and prayed the whole flight but ultimately it took three days into their trip to even eat a solid meal. It wrecked havoc on her body—so much stress, the cortisol and adrenaline to make it through so as soon as she went to rest (sitting on the plane), there was a hurricane of hormones surging in her body and she was unable to discharge it because she was trapped on the plane for ten an half hours with her kids. 

Applying this example of panic in her life to the current situation we all find ourselves in, Maggie says that when she starts to feel that pent up feeling, she has an urge to run. And she isn’t “a runner” but it feels so good to get that energy out in a way that isn’t harmful or destructive. “My body needs it… In this season of being at home it is so crucial to move, to physically move our bodies… Moving my body helps me get through panic.”

Jill noticed a few things from the story that Maggie shared: The feeling of being trapped was so loud. And “feeling the weight of having to care for them by yourself was too much.” And Jill makes the connection to this current season: All that is happening again right now, being trapped at home having to carry the weight of caring for the children. It is too much and you’re doing it. But now you’re allowing yourself to run, which you could not do on the airplane. 

“When you say it, it makes sense to me!” Maggie laughs.

It’s always easier to do it for someone else then for ourselves.

Jill says she’s been running too. She used to run more but had injures that have prevented her from doing it. But now that there is so little else to do she has picked it back up again and it feels so good. 

Jill names that being trapped is another thing that we’re all dealing with right now. 

Danielle says, definitely. She baked cookies to take to some dear friends so she could be un-trapped for a little bit today and she intentionally saved some to deliver tomorrow so she had another excuse to leave the house.  Her son wanted to go with her and she talked with him explaining that she’d been with him all day. But even though she got to bring the cookies to her friend, when she delivered them her friend tried to chat with her from behind a glass door and Danielle said she felt trapped from being able to be with her friend. Social distancing has this feeling of “I can’t talk to you too long, you’re not in my crew.” When she drove home she parked at a grocery store and didn’t do go in. She sat in her car just savoring those moments of not being in the house and seeing the faces of her friends. 

Jill named the kindness that Danielle showed herself in just stopping to savor those moments, savoring the longing to be in real connection.

Maggie asked about other attachment styles are playing out right now under COVID:

Jill said those who have anxious attachment may want to move really close, much like Danielle’s son did when he wanted to come with her to deliver cookies. This anxious attachment moves towards others because being close brings a sense of soothing and settling to their bodies. 

This is a delicate dance when you have people whose attachment style is to move away and someone else’s is to move towards. 

Danielle says sometimes she gets that way, where she sends out a slough of text messages and just wants to hear from someone that their alive. She jokes about not having the attention span for Marco Polo when her friends send her long video messages it overwhelms her. She believes that we all carry a bit of each kind of attachment styles and Jill seconds that. Jill says we even have different attachment styles with different people. Ultimately all attachments styles are seeking connection. It’s complex and people are complex. 

How do we bridge the gap of where we’re all at and how do we find a way to actually meet each other in it?

Jill mentions what renown researcher Brené Brown does in her family: If one person is not 100% her family sits down and comes up with a family plan to address it. For example if mom is operating at 50%, who is going to step in to fill that other 50%?

Maggie said she has seen this dynamic at play in her family, though not as intentionally done. When went to the Allender Center for Cert 1 training in Trauma Care she would be gone for 4 days in a row at weekend intensives. This required a stepping up from the kids and from her husband to manage all the things in her absence. After that first weekend, she would have conversations with her kids and husband before hand about what they all can be doing to prepare for mom’s absence and acknowledging that in this particular season of mom going to back to school, more was going to be required of them. These conversations make all the difference because without them it feels like a “surprise, she’s gone! Preparation helps reduce the disruption and brings a sense of calm in knowing what to expect. 

Jill says, that preparation helps to circumvent hard feelings that come afterward. It is words and a little bit of planning. 

Danielle says it is a lot of navigate our own deficiencies in our attachment styles and then try to raise kids that will be imperfect, who will experience trauma and harm, and the hope is that they will have a sense of what secure attachment is like. 

Jill wants to provide for her kids a way to interpret what they are feeling with words. She sat with her 18 year old the other night and reassured her that what she is feeling is normal and that the weight and heaviness she is feeling is collective. “There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s just the way you feel.” She said, we’re just shooting for “good enough” attachment: 50% or more!

Maggie says she loves the good enough attachment; there is such grace in this season with that 50% attachment. There is such a temptation to do all the things right now, with people making bread from scratch, school their kids at home, working from home…. And to be able to say, we’re not going to make bread from scratch and that’s okay. We shouldn’t try to be more productive or even as productive as before because we are dealing with unprocessed despair from collective anxiety, uncertainty and disappointment. We are holding it in our bodies. Just take the pressure off and be “good enough.”

Jill says it is a big swing for her, some days she’s ready to take on big and new projects and other days she doesn’t have the energy for anything. And there’s no criticism or judgment either way. What if it’s just that we’re present to whatever it is that we’re doing? What if that was the goal? That seems more real then some of the other things out there. 

Danielle names that presence is exactly what Jill offered her daughter that day at the river, an investment that will have a powerful return down the road. 

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Jill is reading: Murder Mysteries! 

Jill is listening to: Brené Brown’s podcast “F*ing First Time” and Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond’s “Dear Sugar” Podcast

Jill is inspired by: The kindness of people around the world, showing the beautiful parts of humanity

Connect with Jill at darlingmom.com / Darling Mom Podcast / [email protected]

Jill’s writing at Jillinked.com 

Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.