This Is My Life: Cognitive Journaling in Bathroom Stalls
A brain gone wild needs a place to recover.
I feel like this piece could end with the title, because if you know, you know. Well, actually, if you know, you might think this is about the nausea that sometimes accompanies anxiety. It’s not.
This is about the sanctuary many of us with anxiety disorders seek and find in bathroom stalls, because where else?
My Initiation
The first time I sought mental refuge in a bathroom stall, I was in Kazakhstan. Yes, Kazakhstan. I basically spent three summers there during college with a small team of other college kids. We partnered with a local church, and built beautiful friendships with the people.
We led a high-energy day camp (I sweated out all my liquids in a chicken suit), hosted a soccer camp, taught English classes, and led an overnight discipleship camp. On weekends, we went on killer hikes and ate with our new friends. We laughed a lot. It was good times. It was also exhausting times — but the meaningful, soul-satisfying kind of exhausting.
Well, there was one kind of exhausting that wasn’t soul-satisfying. It was more like soul-smashing. Thankfully it didn’t last too long.
It hit me right before our English class started one night. We had just arrived via crazy taxi to the small seminary where our classes met. Suddenly, I was about to lose my crap (I can’t say the “s-word” because I want the other Christians to make it past this line.).
I followed my co-teachers up the stairs toward our classroom, but in an unexpected act of desperation, I peeled out from behind them toward the bathroom. I wanted to help them prepare for class, but I just couldn’t. I had to retreat.
Impending doom weighed down heavily on my chest. My breathing wasn’t right. My mind was scrambled with indecipherable “what-ifs” and “not-enough’s.” Everything is going to be horrible and it is all my fault.
It felt like that.
I pushed a stall open, locked the door behind me, and hung my heavy backpack on the door’s hook.
I just stood there.
My muscles were tense, my heart was pounding, and somehow, I was simultaneously restless and paralyzed. Students would start showing up at any minute, but teaching for two minutes felt impossible, let alone two hours.
I CAN’T DO THIS. I HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO GIVE! I let a primal scream rip in my head. It was a prayer. The Bible says here that when we don’t know what to pray, the Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf. I think my internal scream translated to something like, “Save me from this! HEELLLLP!”And then just a bunch of gargled panicky stuff.
I didn’t know it, but that was probably one of my first anxiety attacks.
A moment later, there was a physical release in my chest and a momentary, tingly surge went through my body. I’ve experienced that sensation multiple times since: It’s the feeling of falling from the peak of anxiety to the valley of utter relief.
It’s like turning off an industrial-sized fan: things stop flying all over the place and sink back to the ground where they’re supposed to be. My thoughts landed back in reality.
In that bathroom stall, when I needed saving, God saved me. Some readers are probably rolling their eyes right now, because “That wasn’t God! That’s the effects of your mental and emotional process, Tiffany!”
I get that. Sometimes, I roll my eyes when people say things like that, too.
But here’s the thing: I think that God works through the emotions He built into us and the brains he made for us. He works through the medication that He gave us the capacity to create. Answers to prayers can be supernatural, but it seems that more often than not, God works through His natural order to rescue His kids.
What were we talking about, again? Oh yah, bathroom stalls.
It got worse.
A few years after Kazakhstan, when I graduated from college, that sense of impending doom returned. Instead of just visiting me once, it hijacked my mind multiple times a day. I prayed and pleaded with God for relief like I did that one night in Kazakhstan, but back home in California, relief became rare. Most of the time, I just stayed stuck. Day in and day out, month after month, I spent most of my time in fight-or-flight mode, unbeknownst to anyone but myself. I barely even realized it — it had become my new “normal.”
When it got so bad that I found myself hysterically crying for reasons I couldn’t explain, my boyfriend (hubby now) encouraged me to tell my doctor, who — thank God — referred me to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
The Whirpool and the Rope
My therapist told me that I was experiencing Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). She taught me about cognitive distortions — how to identify them, and then over the course of two years of therapy — how to pull myself out from the whirlpool that they suck me into.
That’s what anxiety feels like— it’s like being stuck in a whirlpool. Therapy is for learning how to grab on to the rope and climb out. It would take me months at the gym to build enough muscle to actually reach the top of one of those quintessential gym-class-ropes.
Likewise, it took me months of professional guidance and practice to develop the mental muscle to pull myself out of anxiety attacks. It looks like an exercise called Cognitive Journaling.
It takes an awful lot of concentration to grab ahold of that rope and journal away my duress. When I’m anxious, I have like 1% concentration ability, so that’s a challenge. Imagine circling around that whirlpool: You’re just thinking, OH CRAP OH CRAP OH CRAP! You’re not contemplating Plato or reflecting on why you were so tired yesterday.
It’s hard to be introspective and level-headed when you’re in a whirlpool, and yet that’s what must be done to overcome an anxiety attack. So I really have to try. I need to remove myself from external distractions like conversations and snack aisles. It helps to do a relaxation exercise beforehand.
I need to focus and journal it out. Preferably in a physical notebook or journal of sorts. If that’s not available, since I’ve had so much practice, I can use my phone.
The Nature of the Beast
When you have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, you don’t get to choose when or where you are when your anxiety attacks happen. Most people, myself included, don’t have clear-cut triggers.
It’s a free-floating anxiety that hijacks rational thought at any time, in any place: at the grocery store, at work, in mid-conversation on a coffee date, at my best friend’s house, driving solo — it has no regard for my agenda. It’s a jerk.
The symptoms vary for each of us, but in my case, the monster lets its presence known by tightening my throat and turning my skin red hot. Within a couple minutes, my breaths are shallow, muscles tensed, and I’m on edge with adrenaline gone haywire. That’s an anxiety disorder, for you. It’s fight or flight out of context, and it’s exhausting.
The longer I let it fester without confronting it, the worse it gets. So I need to remove distractions; I need to journal. I am in a very fragile, volatile state. If my anxiety kicks on and I’m at home, no problem. I’ll just grab my journal, lay in bed, and deal with it. But if I’m at work or at a party or at a church gathering, things get a bit more complicated.
I’m not about to bust out my journal and do my thought process at a party. Because people will have questions. And even if no one asks them, I’m still distracted by the thought that they might ask them. It’s really hard to be introspective and let yourself express emotion and do deep relaxation exercises with an audience present.
I know I shouldn’t care about all those other people, but I’m a person, and so on some level, I do, especially when I’m in a compromised emotional state.
Where can you go where there’s never an audience? You guessed it — a bathroom stall!
The Only Guaranteed Privacy
I’m a high school teacher. Nobody gives us time for anything. So when I’m in panic mode, and I have a ten minute break between periods, I’m not going to risk it. I’m going to lock myself in a glorious little cubical of privacy, open Google Notes on my phone, and start typing away in my “Killing Anxiety” tab.
Now, my classroom is a nicer environment than a bathroom, so why not do my deep breathing and thought process there?
Because audiences are everywhere. Especially at a high school. If another teacher walks by and sees me in my room, they might pop in and start telling me about last period’s ridiculousness. I’d like to hear it, I really would, but while sitting there, I’d just be thinking “OH CRAP OH CRAP OH CRAP” — because whirlpool.
And students, don’t even get my started on them! Their pursuit for attention can be ruthless, and I have quite a soft spot for them. I have learned over the years that I need to take care of myself first in order to be my best for my kiddos, and to avoid burnout. I want to be there for them, but when my mind is circling the drainpipe, I just can’t.
So, bathroom stall it is.
Audience Participation
There is one other option: I could take care of myself in a non-bathroom stall, and if anyone approaches me, then I can just be honest. I am a proponent of vulnerability, after all. So why not just be honest and tell them that I’m having an anxiety attack and I need to take care of it?
Because so many people just don’t get it.
I know this from experience.
If I tell them I’m having an anxiety attack, they’ll get hyper-concerned and use their pity-voice on me.
Or they’ll ask me 20 questions about my disorder.
Or worse yet, they’ll give me advice. Like, “Oooh, you need to stop eating gluten!” Or, “Have you read such-and-such’s self-help book? You MUST.”
I know they’re just trying to be helpful, but they’re making a huge, insensitive assumption, and failing to consider the fact that I’m in pain.
Here’s what I want to say: That’s nice and it’s all very great, but I’m not you. Anxiety and brains aren’t aren’t made in Henry Ford’s factory. Please stop simplifying the situation. Humans are complex. And right now what I need is to spend these ten tiny minutes trying to regain a piece of sanity, so please stop talking about your self-help book.
I’m not saying that it’s pointless to try new strategies and new ideas. What I am saying is if I tell you I’m feeling anxious, that’s not the time to tell me what worked for you.
Instead, ask me what works for me. I’ll be honest: “I just need to be by myself so I can focus and do my journaling.” I don’t mind saying that, and when I do, people get it. But rarely do people ask that.
I’m a big fan of James 1:19: “Be quick to listen and slow to speak.” Let’s bring that one back.
This, my friends, is why we hide in bathroom stalls. No risk of a face popping up in my window or a knock on the door. Just me on a toilet and some close quarters. I can focus there. I can take deep breaths while I count. I can get out my phone and do my Cognitive Journaling.
On Dignity
At times, I’ll think, “there must be a more dignified way of going about this.” Should all of us with anxiety disorders have to retreat to public bathrooms to maintain some level of sanity?
For me, the answer is, “I don’t mind.” I have an invisible illness. Not everyone understands. Distractions are everywhere. I am in serious mental duress, and I know what generally fixes it.
I’m not so entitled that I am above bathroom stall therapy. I can choose be grateful that I was able to pay for therapy a decade ago and learn how to grab the rope and get out of the whirlpool, even if I have to sit on a toilet to do it.
