I have a longstanding fear of Getting in Trouble. Those words come up a lot in discussion with Adam. As in…
Adam: [parks car]
Me: Are we allowed to park here?
Adam: Yes, it’s a parking lot.
Me: But the store doesn’t open for another fifteen minutes.
Adam: I think it’s okay.
Me: …but what if we get in trouble?
That kind of conversation is extremely common. No, we’re not likely to have our car towed – WHILE WE ARE INSIDE IT – for arriving fifteen minutes before the store opens and parking in their parking lot. Part of me does understand that. And another part of me doesn’t want to Get in Trouble.
One day Adam came back with a somewhat curious, “You worry about getting in trouble a lot.” I was flummoxed. Did I?
Well, yes, it turns out that I do. Once I’d been made aware of the overused phrase, I started noticing it crop up more than I was really comfortable with. I realized it went back a long way, too.
For a long time, I kept a mental list of the things I’d “Gotten in Trouble” for. Oh, not the little things like failing to clean my room1, but things like the time I threw a snowball at school (I was in kindergarten), or the time I put dirt in a boy’s hair (grade 2; I did warn him), the time I told someone who lied rather a lot that I did not want to be friends with her (grade 4), or the time the teacher snapped at me for the novel I was trying to hide inside my desk, while reading it, while he tried to teach (grade 6). Okay, maybe I still keep something of a list.
You may have noted that these examples are all two years apart. That wasn’t deliberate, but while there were definitely other instances on the list I used to keep, there were not a lot. And I recited the list in my head like a list of unforgivable, unforgettable failures. I don’t know why. I suppose I was just predisposed to worry about… getting in trouble.
This may be tied to this thing from my childhood. Early childhood, definitely within my first four, maybe five years. I used to worry, as this very young child, that the phone ringing after I’d gone to bed signalled that my parents were making plans to give me away to someone else (specifically because they didn’t want me anymore). I’m sure you can imagine what I thought when it was the doorbell. And this is odd because, up tothe age of about 5, I actually consider that I had a fairly idyllic childhood. I did not think my parents hated me during daylight, but there I would lie in the darkness, trying not to breathe.
I never told anyone about this, as far as I can recall, before adulthood. Even then, I would throw it in as a humorous anecdote. It wasn’t until this “Getting in Trouble” thing came up that I ever considered the potential impact on a child’s mind of repeatedly thinking her parents were secretly trying to get rid of her. And I don’t know that this thing fits into the fear-of-Getting-in-Trouble thing. But it would certainly be easy to believe that one led to the other.
When I hit high school, bipolar showed its dual faces. Between the episodes of depression and hypomania, the number of things I was doing that I really shouldn’t have skyrocketed. I don’t remember all of those, there were so many (although some of them stand out more than others when I look back), and honestly, I think some of them I never realized were problems. But some of them made my list.
Eventually I went on lithium and stopped doing quite so many inappropriate things. But guess what? Little me, who was terrified of getting in trouble, and post-hypomanic me, who was overwhelmed by all the thoughtless, brainless, senseless things she was now trying to keep a list of? I am still both of them.
A key question that’s worth paying attention to is, “What does Getting in Trouble mean?”
Oh, how I wish I had a coherent answer to that question.
Depending on the circumstances, Getting in Trouble could mean anything from being told “no,” to being imprisoned. It’s this kind of nebulous disapproval space. And when I’m experiencing it in the moment, I am definitely not pausing to consider what the actual consequences of the action in question are likely to be. I recognize that this would probably be useful, but it’s always hard to catch myself and impose logical thought.
I guess, having written all this, I realize that my path forward is to catch myself thinking I’ll Get in Trouble, and analyze what I’m actually afraid of vs. what the level of anxiety is. I will try to remember to do that, and try to remember to report my findings.
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1 Another chronic problem.