It’s April, so it’s time for me to do my taxes.
This year, taxes are pretty charged for me. I’m anticipating having to pay some capital gains taxes that I haven’t exactly budgeted for perfectly. And I’m worried that the tax bill is going to be more than I can afford right now.
I’m fully aware that I’m required to do my taxes, and I’m fully aware that delaying them incurs interest fees. And I can’t do them.
I can’t do them. I can’t even start them.
This is PDA in a nutshell for me. Being fully aware that I need to do something, and finding innumerable reasons why I should be doing something else right now. Not because those other things are more important, but because those other things feel less threatening. My taxes carry a potential threat to my safety and financial security in them, and my body is instinctively moving away from that threat.
My taxes carry a potential threat to my safety and financial security in them, and my body is instinctively moving away from that threat.
I remember reading an account from the great physicist Richard Feynman, who was curious what it was like to get hypnotized. The hypnotist had implanted a suggestion in his mind that when he went back to his seat, he was going to have to walk all the way around the room first. He wouldn’t be able to go directly to his seat.
When he got up to move, he was aware that the hypnotist had given him this suggestion. It seemed silly to him:
All through the demonstration I was vaguely aware of what was going on, and cooperating with the things the hypnotist said, but this time I decided, "Damn it, enough is enough! I'm gonna go straight to my seat."
And then he walked all the way around the room!
When it was time to get up and go off the stage, I started to walk straight to my seat. But then an annoying feeling came over me: I felt so uncomfortable that I couldn't continue. I walked all the way around the hall.
Feynman’s summary of the experience haunts me to this day:
All the time you're saying to yourself, "I could do that, but I won't" which is just another way of saying that you can't.
- Richard Feynman, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
So what I’m experiencing with my taxes is not a low-key annoyance, as it is for most folks I guess. It is registering as an actual threat to my body, despite there being no actual physical threat in my environment right now. My body doesn’t know that my taxes aren’t a physical threat to me. So my nervous system is steering me away from them, just as it would a snake on the ground or a grizzly bear in the distance.
The only thing that seems to help is to increase my felt sense of safety around the activity. So I’m going to ask a friend to sit on a call with me for a few minutes while I get my taxes started.
I judge myself harshly for needing this kind of support, but the support makes the difference between me not doing it at all, and me actually doing it.
I guess sometimes I just need a reminder that I’m not alone. In my primitive brain, where taxes are lions and spiders, I need someone with me who has my back.
The captain of my men’s group gave me some feedback recently. He said the anxious part of me needs to know that I’m here to take the reigns again. That I’m not going to let the lion threaten him. That I am strong and resilient, and I will hold my boundaries.
He needs to know I have his back.
So maybe it’s not so important right now what I do to create that safety. It’s just important that I do it. Whether it’s calling a friend, or eventually relying on my own inner self, I’ll learn over time that I’ve got this. I can figure it out when the time comes.