What to do when you're on fire?

An earnest question

We had a tough week this past week. Two birthdays, a sickness that swept like a heat rash through the entire family, long work hours for my daughter’s dad, and a 24 month regression that brought her mama (aka, me) to her knees.

I kept saying that two years old slammed into us, but maybe we slammed into it?

My daughter wouldn’t let any one else near her this week. Not her dad, nor either of her beloved grandparents (her normal caretakers during my work hours)—only me. She’d scream and rattle the handle of my door anytime I tried to slip away to check an email or use the bathroom. She stayed up until 11 pm every night after having meltdowns all day long and insisted on being nursed to sleep.

Every plan I had for the week went out the window so I could just meet the bonfire that was our official slide into two years old.

Now that we’re on the other side (something shifted this weekend, though I’m trying not to look at it too hard in case it goes away) I keep looping back to this one moment.

I was laying in bed with her as she fell asleep for her nap. She had once again refused her grandparent’s care and I once again had to let go of any idea that I’d be able to work that day. She was worrying at my breast as she finally let go into sleep and I just laid there, staring at the red nightlight on her bookshelf, feeling The Fire ripple through me.

That’s what I call it now, the sensation I feel in my nervous system when the too-muchness hits a peak. When the overwhelm I’m so prone to as a highly sensitive person finally goes beyond my capacity.

The Fire.

It’s visceral sensation, as if my nerve endings are curling like the end of a twig in a flame.

I’ve seen pictures of how the nervous system branches like tributaries throughout the entire body. A river becoming a stream becoming a creek.

When I sit with The Fire, it’s the closest I’ve ever been to actually feeling every winding waterway of my nervous system.

I can feel it, because it’s all on fire.

And in moments like this, it’s almost as if I can watch it happen. Like witnessing a log carelessly tossed from a campfire. First the pine needles go up in a haloed ring, and then some invisible line in the landscape catches and runs, creating a sinewed map of flames, lightning bolts moving like water through the entire landscape.

After too many days of too-muchness, my nerve pathways become dry tributaries filled with last year’s leaves. That final brand hits the tinder and the entire length of me goes up in flames.

As I laid there, watching myself burn down at 2 pm, I found myself wondering—how does one put out a fire?

Because here’s the thing about catching fire when you’re in the midst of a job (aka, parenting) where the most important thing is to remain present— there’s no real way to escape it.

So how do you put out a fire when cannot will it away, cannot change the situation, cannot out-run it?

When I’m in the midst of these moments, it’s often hard for me to think. So, I try to keep an ongoing list of strategies in my head that I practice over and over—like how they had us memorize “stop, drop and roll” in school—because the reality is, when you’re on fire, there’s no space to contemplate.

My current list includes:

1. Get outside. Even if it’s just to stare at the moon for five minutes. Even if it’s just a single splash of creek water on your face. Get outside and take a deep breath.

2. Spend fifteen minutes before bed or during a nap doing a somatic exercise that is soothing for your nervous system (like full body rocking).

3. Light a candle with the covers pulled up to your neck and tell it everything that needs to be spoken.

4. Sing. I never used to be a singer before (at least not with a capital S) but since becoming a mother singing has become one of my most valuable tools. When I feel on the edge of an implosion and there’s no way to actually, physically, take a break from the job of parenting, I start singing. Normally it’s something that also calms my daughter down (if she likes the song, otherwise I’ll be met with a chorus of “no! not that one!”). Singing is a direct way to stimulate the vagus nerve, bringing us out of a survival state. I found that if I can keep up the singing for twenty minutes, I’m often in a much different place.

5. Find a way, any way, to make yourself laugh. This week that looked like singing the lyrics to “Break Stuff” by Limp Bizkit to my daughter when she woke up in a particularly foul mood one morning. She ended up thinking it was hilarious too, probably because of all the words I intentionally “beeped” out while singing. But somehow being able to laugh at the absurdity of it all (including me singing a rage rock anthem from middle school) just made the absolute circus of the week bearable.

So now I’m truly curious about you, especially all my fellow parents out there who are also HSPs, what do you do when you’re on fire?

What would you add to the list?

Let’s make an island in the middle of the river together, so that when we feel the flames rising again, we know we have something to swim towards.