Stranded in the airport

I was stranded, yet again, in the DCA airport.

I have been to the Washington, DC airport many times in my life. I went to graduate school in Baltimore and have many friends have lived in DC. I have a real fondness for the city. Except for its airport.

Somehow, every time I fly out of DC, trying to get home, I get delayed. Very delayed.

Recently, I spent a great few days with a friend, celebrating her final trimester of pregnancy. We talked about parenting, pregnancy, marriage, identity - all of it. It was a wonderful few days of female friendship.

I got to the airport, so excited to get home to see my kids and husband. Although grateful for the time away, I was ready to hug my kids. I also wanted to get home to relieve my husband of parenting duties (although he did not complain of the difficulty once). I boarded the plane, with the sun shining, ready for a quick flight back to Ohio.

We taxied out to the runway and paused. After a few moments, the pilot came on the intercom to say that a storm was coming in, and we needed to wait. So, we waited on the runway for a little while, and then learned we had to deplane and wait the storm out in the airport.

We ended up waiting 7 hours.

Now, I know that safety is always the most important factor when flying. Of course it is not good to fly in the middle of a large storm. But, I just wanted to get home.

Travel always brings up a degree of anxiety for me, likely for a variety of reasons. I find traveling enjoyable, but also incredibly stressful at times. I tend to be more of a homebody, so there is rarely a vacation or trip where I am not looking forward to getting home.

I felt this stress significantly during that 7 hour wait in the DCA airport. I called my husband, apologetic and angry that I couldn’t be home to relieve him, to give my kids a kiss goodnight. He attempted to console me, saying that safety was the priority, and reminding me that everyone was happy at home. That the delay wasn’t my fault. I called my mom, who empathized with me and offered to help with my kids.

Yet I remained anxious. I remained in a heightened state of anxiety until I felt that plane take off 7 hours later. Until I set foot in my home and kissed my sleeping kids.

Now, you might be asking, as a psychologist, why am I talking about my travel woes to you?

It is because, in that time of waiting, there was little I could do to relieve the anxiety. My usual coping skills were ineffective. I could feel the anxiety in my body, radiating off me. In those moments, I wished I could be more casual, easygoing, untroubled. I wished I didn’t experience intense anxiety, that I could manage it better. I wished I could enjoy the lingering minutes of independence I had before going back into mom mode. I wished I could be the type of person that could go with the flow, relax despite inconvenience. I wished to be different.

This sentiment is something I hear so much from my clients – their desire to be different. Their frustration at themselves for their instinctual response to situations – their instinct for anxiety, rage, resentment, sadness, etc. They wish they could just be different. That life could be easier.

And I get it – it doesn’t feel good to feel these emotions. It is distressing. And incredibly hard. Even more so when you are caring for children at the same time.

And yet, the thing that happens is that guilt and shame are then added to the cycle. Not only do we feel anxious or sad or angry, but then we also feel guilty about feeling those things, which then reinforces and exacerbates our original emotion. I felt incredibly anxious about the flight delay, and then felt shame that I felt anxious, which then added to my anxiety. It is a perfect storm for self-loathing, and not productive for our coping.

After I got home and reflected on my response to the travel inconvenience, it got me thinking about something I often say to clients (but was obviously very tough for me to do for myself). We may not be able to fully control our initial instinct toward a certain emotion, but we can reduce our shame-filled response to it. We can start to turn toward grace rather than guilt.

I may always have an instinct for stress when it comes to travel. This is likely a combination of my temperament (that I was born with), genetics (also born with), family dynamics growing up (we had amazing family vacations which we all still recount with happiness, but that were stressful at times), difficulty managing a lack of control (also born with, also reinforced by life), as well as a thousand other small factors. Travel stress will likely always occur in some form or another for me.

And that’s okay. Feeling hard emotions - sadness, anxiety, rage - is uncomfortable, distressing, even debilitating at times. And, there is nothing wrong with me or you for that instinct. We so often expect perfection out of ourselves – that we should respond to situations in an ideal way. Or that we should do everything in our power to avoid uncomfortable feelings. Understandable, but not realistic.

So instead of asking the question, “what is wrong with me for feeling this way?” what if the question could be, “OK, I am feeling this way, what do I need to do to show myself grace in this moment?” Instead of, “how long will I feel like this?” we could say, “this feeling is temporary and does not define me.”

Disclaimer: this is easier said than done. And the goal of this is not to get rid of the unwanted emotion, as much as we want to. The goal is to shift our response to the unwanted emotion. Shift the story that we tell ourselves about who we are. Shift that story toward a story of understanding, of grace, of love. Shift that story as we would for a friend, our child, a loved one.

You are deserving of grace. Let’s have that be the narrative.