Healing anxiety through story

By Paulina Vallin

Once upon a time, I was sipping my cappuccino at a sunny cafe in Studio City when a wave of anxiety suddenly came over me. I felt the familiar pull into whatever brain-loop my obsession would choose for me today. A good old amygdala hijacking. The theme of the day: “When does everyone find out I’m a fraud and simply not lovable?” I wanted to turn to the person next to me and whimper, “There’s a monster inside of me. He screams things at me and it hurts!” 
Deciding that might not end well, I started writing instead...about a little monster in my belly with long yellow nails that would drag against my stomach walls while shouting his wicked words at me. I named him Baby. Starting to feel fascinated with my little made-up beast, I kept going and little by little I found some relief. The panic subsided. I had unknowingly started a completely new healing process for myself and it had everything to do with story. This was the beginning of Journey of Mem, my self-help fairytale novel.

My parents both have emotional trauma from childhood, and since we are a musical household, whatever couldn’t be told in words was told through music. “I love you” was delivered by the notes of my dad’s classical guitar. “I’m sorry” was cried out through my mother’s singing. I learned to express myself like that, too. I’d write on our old typewriter about fantastical characters who’d speak the words I wanted to say or hear.

Paulina Vallin

Or I’d dance, countless hours on the creaking floors of our Swedish country house, twisting and turning my body until tears, laughter, anger, lust, or whatever it was that needed to burst out, finally had run its course.

The stories my mother would read me were always rich with symbolism and meaning and she didn’t protect me against the heartbreaking parts. I got the original The Little Mermaid by H.C Andersen and anyone who has read that one knows it’s nothing near the happy version Disney made. We read Finnish Moomin in which a child becomes invisible because nobody makes her feel important. Another favorite was a story about a girl saving the moon and the sun from a witch who, in reality, just felt so damn lonely that she wanted to take away the light from everyone else, too. I remembered that story when I grew up and was able to detect mutated loneliness in people. My mother played a huge part in exercising my empathy. I was in empathy boot camp without even knowing it.

While being a very vivacious child, I was also very anxious (to the level that it affected my day-to-day life) and my need for escapism was enormous. So one day, tween-me went to knock on a therapist’s door to ask why I couldn’t fly with my umbrella and why something Beyond spoke so loudly. She said I was crazy and brought her hand to her mouth. “Did I say that aloud? I’m sorry.” If I could go back in time and talk with her, I would tell her to answer that little girl in terms that she asked for, symbolic terms. Tell her to write down what Beyond might look like, what characters live there, and what they say to each other. She should have understood that instead of using stories to escape, you can use them to confront something your soul is begging you to explore. The embrace of fantasy can be the exact thing to hold your hand across the broader to reality.

“The embrace of fantasy can be the exact thing to hold your hand across the broader to reality.”

After that day at the cafe, with Baby’s birth, I started materializing different issues into fairytales. How would procrastination take shape if it were a person or a place? If Insanity and Sanity were sisters, how would they interact? What if perspective could be bought in an eyewear store? Which lenses would you say you have? How could I describe an anxiety attack using weather? Most importantly, what would the relationship between a person and their monster of doubt look like? Could it be healed and overcome? What if the monster was made up by pain that wasn’t even yours to begin with but was generational? Would you even want it to go away if it was part of your history? I mean, hey, in a way, my monster is the closest friend I have. Born out of a need to protect me, always there and not wanting me to get hurt. However, I’m well aware that “not wanting to get hurt” is usually exactly what ends up hurting me.

“Fairy tales, myths and fables since ancient times have, through their imaginative metaphors, offered us a way to explore our human issues from a safe enough distance.”

Fairy tales, myths and fables since ancient times have, through their imaginative metaphors, offered us a way to explore our human issues from a safe enough distance. Journey of Mem has made it possible for me to translate my inner world into an outer world and vice versa. Two worlds, craving to be unified and each mirroring the other. But, in my case, and like so many others, through  broken glass.

For those of you who are fighting your own “Baby”, stop fighting. You can’t fight yourself to peace. Sit with it., get to know it, and heal it. Offer him tools, but keep your boundaries. Watch your many-colored reflection in the mirror with intrigue and compassion, and speak to yourself with the same love as you would to a child you were responsible for. Only then will the mirror between the outer and inner world finally heal from its cracks. And like the Japanese art of Kintsugi (golden joinery), which is the repairing of broken pottery by filling in the cracks with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, the traces of your healed brokenness will just add history and beauty to your features. Another lovely metaphor.

You can follow Paulina’s blog on www.paulinavallin.com and follow her on Instagram as @paulinavallinauthor.