I've got these lists, but I'm still Lost!

It feels like this week, possibly the entire last 30 days has been a series of endless task lists. I've been a slave to these lists. Checking off task after task, organizing my mind, regulating my emotions, and prooving my productivity or worth by how many things I've been able to check off. How often though, do the things we've put into place to help us become the very things that keep us stuck?

A long time ago I came to terms with the fact that I'm a am an anxious person. As a child, I resisted new situations and new people often crying and throwing fits when the unexpected arose. Sometime in high school, I remember having my first panic attack, laying on the floor of my parents' living room my heart feeling like it would beat out of my chest and I was unable to stop my own racing thoughts. I remember believing that somehow I was dying and there was something fatally wrong with me

Having never had exposure to therapy or mental health counseling until my 20's I was diagnosed over and over again with "adjustment disorders". It took years to realize that anxiety had always been a big part of my life. Somewhere around 27, a wonderful Holistic health doctor informed me that my breathing was normal and that my feeling like I couldn't breathe was more in line with Generalized Anxiety disorder than an asthmatic health condition. Finally, there was a label that fit and could point me in the right direction.

But there's a grim. I realize it's a bit more anxiety became something that was part of my everyday life. I cut out caffeine and began seeing an art therapist regularly to explore ways to live life informed by this new information. Over time, I realized that my anxiety became a barometer for the stress in my life. It informed me when I needed more sleep or rest, more fun, more healthy people in my life. It informed me when I needed to be introspective or creative. It revealed how well I was taking care of myself and when things needed to change.

Lists have always been the best way to tackle the endless chaos in my mind, a tangible way to organize my thoughts or tasks. In college, the lists were color-coded by subject and due date. In my career, lists became virtual calendars, schedules, and spreadsheets. As a parent, they look like chore lists, events calendars, and weekend duties. I often find myself writing things down for the thrill of scratching it out signifying completion. The simple action of crossing something off the serotonin release I need to keep going.

It took me a while to learn that the tool I use to help organize the chaos of my mind can very quickly become the force of anxiety itself. The solution or tool, has now become the problem. The list becomes the measure of how I'm doing and what's going on with my mental health. Am I living life or am I avoiding, just ticking things off a task list? Turning off feelings, dissociating, mindlessly checking boxes to things done? I often joke in the workplace about how "type A" personality traits believe more control calms chaos. I find it stifling to work with these people, but when I am stressed and anxious, I make more lists. Endless lists.

I'm in a phase of transition right now. Life is urging me into something new something unknown. I've made the decision. I know the long-term goal, but the map of how to get there is unclear. There are numerous tasks to complete, things I must process, acknowledge, and grieve to let go of the old and prepare for the new. The lists aren't working this time. I feel lost realizing the tools I have come to depend on are now part of the problem. The lists are getting in the way of action. If the list must be completed to move forward, I fear I could be stuck here forever.

Thinking about and reading about growth is so different from going through it. In our world of "highlight reels" and finished products, growth, and change are beautiful and aspirational. We see the finished product, the final destination, not the pit stops along the way. In real life, growth is messy, difficult, and uncomfortable.

I've been reading recently about women journeying through mid-life. A theme emerges in this literature of reclaiming and rebirth. There is this idea of creating or coming back to the person we were all along

I'm there. A small lonely "you are here" mark on a map. There is no trail, no labels, no mile markers, only a map with endless possibilities.

The process of charting your own course is more uncomfortable, and awkward, and sucks so much more than we allow people to see. But along this journey too are possibilities of more love, more hope, and more richness than we can ever find when we follow the paved trails. I've been creating a map of my process and my journey. Just like my life, artwork is a process an endless becoming. I invite you along.

I wonder, have you been here too? Have you faced a time of transition in your life when the tools that you have, the tools that have worked in the past without fail don't seem to work? Have you faced a time when you realized that you need to pivot, to course correct, to find something new, become someone new, a person you haven't met yet?