Last month, Minnesota saw sub-zero temperatures, with some districts even canceling school because of the dangerous weather conditions. Even my dog, Taydoh, didn’t protest when my son, who was chatting with me on his bed, cocooned him in the end of a blanket.
A double load of tension
I’m originally from Michigan, so I’m not exactly a stranger to cold temperatures. I remember going out as a kid to make snow forts using my mom’s aluminum bread pans to make bricks.
But some of my worst times with the weather were back in college at CMU. I lived just off campus. My apartment was across the street from the music building where I spent most of my time, tucked behind a couple of stores. So, the walk home was only about 10 minutes.
But like Taydoh, I’m small as Hades. I have no undercoat. So, my muscles tense up and I shiver like this:
But my muscles also had to do work lugging my crap-ton of books and oboe stuff. So, it felt like
Having to handle the involuntarily tension from my body being cold and carry a load meant my “simple” 10-minute walk became a physical endurance test, with the involuntary tension and intentional tension working against or compounding on each other for the entire walk. I’d get to my door with my neck and upper back absolutely burning.
Enjoy the cold as an adult I still do not. Because I sit at my desk so much and have built horrible upper body muscle tone from it, going out in more extreme temperatures has become particularly excruciating — the entire right side of my neck and upper back, which is already too tight, just about dies with getting-stabbed-in-the-base-of-the-skull pain.
Needless to say, me like-y warm.
But sometimes, the relief of warm can be overwhelming.
Getting rid of tension and stress, nature style
Scientists who have studied animals under threat know that, when the threat is gone, the animals who have been in danger will shake. The theory is that the animals instinctively and involuntarily are doing what they can to get the tension out of their bodies and physically reset their nervous systems. The technical term for it is therapeutic tremoring.
People don’t normally go off and shake lake an impala after a stressful day or event. That’s just not part of our norms, although there’s growing recognition in the therapeutic community that some kind of movement or physical activity is beneficial after you experience something stressful.
But we need to let our tension out somehow, and the body has another technique for de-stressing, too — crying. Like shaking, letting tears flow can get the parasympathetic nervous system online.
Massage therapists see firsthand how physical and emotional stress release intersect. It’s not unusual for people to break down during sessions, both because the therapist gets a client’s body into a calmer state and because the therapist creates a supportive space where the client is freer to feel.
So, as a chronically stressed person, sometimes I come inside after tensing up in the cold and, as I warm up, need a moment to myself. Even if I haven’t gotten snowflakes up my nose, if I get nice and warm and all my muscle tension melts, I turn into a blubbery mess. My brain takes the physical cue that it’s safer and OK, and all of a sudden, this happens:
It’s 100 percent normal to blubber
Your stresses might be completely different than mine. But none of us can escape moments or extended periods where, for real or simply perceived reasons, we believe there’s trouble. Life means encountering all kinds of threats, and if you get to into a quiet, warm place and lose it, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. Your body’s just trying to reset after being attacked by the cheetah.
Our culture isn’t good about creating quiet, warm places with intentionality. We’re conditioned to be stoic and press on in the name of productivity. We call it resilience and grit, when in fact, we’re simply extending our time exposed to traumas without healing.
But today, if no one else is offering it to you, I give you permission. It’s OK to go take Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off literally so that what could continue to bother you doesn’t. It’s OK to snuggle under the blanket when you’re done, to do nothing but embrace even fuller relaxation and sniffle (or even ugly cry). I need that. You need that. Just take it.