Nov 10, 2017 | Fire
By Jennifer Shannon LMFT, with Doug Shannon
I’m a planner. I like to know what’s going to happen and I like to be prepared for it. But the wildfire that destroyed our home and belongings was something I hadn’t planned for. I planned for an earthquake.
Our Fountaingrove condo complex practically straddles the Rogers Creek Fault line, the most active fault in Northern California, so I did everything I could to minimize risk. We installed earthquake latches on all our cabinets and attached all our bookcases and bureaus to the walls. We had an earthquake shed built onto our deck with enough food, water, first aid to get us through a week or two. I hosted annual earthquake preparedness socials with other residents. I had the condo association put gas wrenches next to each gas valve. And to top it all off, this summer we hired a structural engineer and had our condo retrofitted. We were locked down and ready for the worst that mother nature could throw at us!
But I didn’t expect a wildfire that we would have only minutes of warning. We escaped with little more than the clothes on our backs, our laptops and a few boxes of family photos. It didn’t take long for me to begin questioning myself. Shouldn’t I have been more prepared? Shouldn’t I have made copies of my birth certificate and passport, uploaded family movies to the cloud? Why didn’t I have enough insurance to cover all our belongings, not just what would be destroyed in an earthquake? Couldn’t I have done more to prevent the complete devastation that we have experienced? The more I questioned myself the more I compounded the misery of our loss.
As a therapist who specializes in treating anxiety, I recognized the chattering of my monkey mind. Something is wrong and I should have prevented it! The belief that we can eliminate all uncertainty and guarantee safety and security is the biggest cause of anxiety I see among my clients. But as my experience showed, even a planner like me can’t be prepared for everything. I knew that if continued to feed that monkey mindset I was destined for more chronic worry and stress. When I examined my values, I knew that it is better to live in the present moment and be flexible about the future than it is to lose the present moment trying to control the future.
My healthier mindset has been severely tested. The night of the fire, I lost a lot of things that I loved, and I don’t want to lose any more. But I ran out of the door with two precious resources that no disaster could take away from me; flexibility and resilience. I’ll use and develop them every day for the rest of my life.
As a therapist and author who specializes in stress and anxiety, and has lost my home in the Santa Rosa fire, I am writing this blog to remind myself of the powerful tools I use in my practice with my clients. If It helps others to deal with their own challenges, nothing would please me more.
Nov 3, 2017 | Fire
By Jennifer Shannon, LMFT
It has been three weeks since the wildfires ravished Northern California, and I, along with so many others, lost their homes and everything in it. So many changes! Learning where everything is at my friend’s house where we are staying temporarily. Shopping at new grocery stores, learning which aisle has what stuff. Replacing our burned car with a new one with a new set of buttons to push. Driving in Santa Rosa and suddenly coming upon a entire block that has been burned, leaving charred earth and twisted metal. Looking up at the surrounding hills that the fire devastated. Nothing feels normal anymore.
Least of all my brain. I am a highly organized person, but I really believe that I can relate to people with ADD now. I start a sentence and then can’t remember where I was going with it. Having so few possessions, one would think I could keep track of them, but I have lost my water bottle and needed to get a new one twice in the past four days. I misplace my eyeglasses at least five times a day. The other day I tried to add something to my iPhone calendar, something I have been doing for years, and I could not remember how to do it! I feel emotionally fragile, easily exhausted and overwhelmed.
I do know, as a therapist, that routine and structure are important. So, I have purposely been doing things that I did before. I have returned to my gym, doing my familiar workouts, and this has felt great. I have been attending my regular Feldenkrais class and Doug and I are meditating at least once a day, just as we did before. But the biggest structured routine in my life has been my work, and this week I decided to return to it. The thought of it excited me, but scared me too. Could I be there for my clients? Could I focus? Would I have enough energy for it?
Walking into my office and seeing my desk, my chairs, my books felt good. The first thing I did was water my plants. Soon it was time for my first session. My client felt awkward talking about her issues, when it was my house that burned down, but soon we eased into the work at hand. Listening attentively, choosing tools to help her with, felt like second nature to me. I could do this! I felt focus, a sense of purpose, and more steady than I had felt since the fire. It was as if the rudder that I could not feel that morning, dropped down, righting and steadying me among the waves of uncertainty.
So, going back to work was finding some normalcy. It does not mean that everything is back to normal. Most things aren’t, and won’t be for a good long time. But for those fifty minutes, I knew what I needed to do, and I could do it. And that felt good.
As a therapist and author who specializes in stress and anxiety, and has lost my home in the Santa Rosa fire, I am writing this blog to remind myself of the powerful tools I use in my practice with my clients. If It helps others to deal with their own challenges, nothing would please me more.
Oct 27, 2017 | Fire
By Jennifer Shannon, LMFT
Spin is my least favorite workout, but nevertheless I pushed myself out of bed this morning and headed to the Parkpoint Club for Lana’s early morning spin class. Even though spin is hard for me, it delivers the biggest endorphin high of any exercise, and after all I’d been through, I needed it. But today, that high seemed many, many miles away.
Just minutes into the class, my body felt really heavy and I couldn’t catch my breath. Lana called for a hill climb, which meant increasing the gear tension. That by itself was intense, but on top of that Lana shouted out to increase the gears by 3, then down by 1, then up by 3 again. This meant that I had to add and subtract in my head while pushing my body to its limits, and since my home burned down in the fire, my brain function has been compromised.
I made a veiled complaint, disguised as a joke about how the math was too hard for me. Lana, on her infinite wisdom said, to the entire class, “Everyone has been effected by this fire and it takes a toll on the body. The smoke has affected our lungs and the stress has affected our heart rates. Go easy on yourselves and listen to your body. It’s your ride”
Lana was right. I’d been working myself too hard, trying to meet expectations that didn’t apply to me in the moment. My ideas of what I should be able to do were ruining my experience of what I could do. The next time Lana instructed us increase the gear tension, I decreased it. When she said three gears I did two (easier to count to and not as physically challenging). Honoring my own body this way, I felt a growing sense of freedom and ease. Before long, I was actually enjoying spin class.
Afterwards as I left the gym, I began to review my plans for the day, and immediately I felt the tug and pressure of the should and the expectations. But wait, I thought. it’s all my ride, every minute of the day!
THE PICTURE TELLS A STORY
The bike shorts were lent to me by Lana the instructor right before class.
The tank top is something I gave to my daughter a year ago that she gave back to me after the fire.
The shoes are actually what I wore out of the house during the fire.
As a therapist and author who specializes in stress and anxiety, and has lost my home in the Santa Rosa fire, I am writing this blog to remind myself of the powerful tools I use in my practice with my clients. If It helps others to deal with their own challenges, nothing would please me more.
Oct 24, 2017 | Fire
By Jennifer Shannon, LMFT with Doug Shannon
Since losing our home in the Tubbs fire, Doug, my husband, and I are together 24/7. Since both of us have taken time off from our jobs, we’ve had a good dose of togetherness. Honestly, right now, I don’t want to be away from him. I’m like a child with separation anxiety whenever we’re apart. But that doesn’t mean I am all sweetness and love to him when we’re together.
This is true especially on the road. Since we lost one car in the fire, we go everywhere together, and when Doug’s at the wheel I’ve found myself telling him when to slow down, where to park, and which way to turn. Yesterday while driving to a post office to pick up our mail, I got so angry at him I called him “a little bitch.” Oh boy! Have you ever seen an angry monkey throwing its poop at an adversary? I was hijacked by my monkey mind, in a fight-flight reaction—emphasis on the fight.
Doug was quiet for a few minutes. Then he said that it had really hurt and that he couldn’t handle name calling. This is a boundary neither of us had ever had to ask the other for, nor had I imagined we’d ever have to. But guess what, instead of apologizing, all I wanted to do was defend and justify myself. While I did have the presence of mind to resist that urge, all I could manage to do was sit there silently, burning with anger and shame. I knew who was being the bitch.
My fault line is needing to feel in control of my surroundings. I have certain ways that I think things should be done, and when something isn’t done my way I can easily feel like I’m losing control. I may point out to others how to do it, or worse, try to take over and do it myself. While I have made progress on working on this part of my personality, in times of stress, like now, I can regress! To help me keep my need for control under control, I made up some rules for myself:
Don’t defend myself
Don’t point things out unless the situation is dangerous
Don’t name call (duh!)
Do breathe into the tightness in my chest and other signs of stress
Do forgive myself for my transgressions
Do let go of control
Having rules to follow in times of chaos is a great start, but I’m human, and I know I’m going to break them sometimes. And that is a great time to practice self-compassion.
As a therapist and author who specializes in stress and anxiety, and has lost my home in the Santa Rosa fire, I am writing this blog to remind myself of the powerful tools I use in my practice with my clients. If It helps others to deal with their own challenges, nothing would please me more.
Oct 17, 2017 | Fire
By Jennifer Shannon, MFT with Doug Shannon
On the Sunday evening before the wildfires struck my husband and I were returning later than planned from a weekend in Tahoe with friends, so I called the kennel that was boarding him and arranged for Mojo, our beloved eleven-year-old Jack Russell mix, to stay another night. When we made our escape at 2am the following morning, Mojo wasn’t on our minds. He was safe with the dog boarder, or so we thought.
At 4am my cell phone rang. It was the dog boarders. Their area was called to evacuate also, and someone in the neighborhood, thinking the dogs were in danger, broke in and turned all the dogs loose—dozens of them— before the boarders could evacuate them. They were out rounding them up, but so far, Mojo could not be found.
If you are a dog owner you know how I felt. Mojo was more than a part of our family. When our three children left home, little ten-pound Mojo somehow filled our empty nest. Part lap dog, part yapping mail truck chaser, Mojo was exactly what his name stands for, a magic charm, a talisman, a hairy little bag of spirit that in a real sense, hung around our necks over our hearts. It was another shock on top of our shock. Doug was catching a little sleep—one of his superpowers, even in a crisis. What should I do? I thought. What can I do?
Every day in my private practice I help people learn to deal with the uncertainty of life. When the monkey mind sounds the alarm that something is wrong, our natural response is to do something to fix it. It’s our first response to fear and anxiety. Do something, do anything to gain control and make the feeling go away. When it’s not a false alarm, and what we hold dear is in real danger, the urge to act is overwhelming. But when the situation is beyond our direct control, the question I ask my clients is, which is the better skill to practice right now— trying to control what is uncontrollable, or trying to stay in the moment tolerating uncertainty and negative emotions?
I knew the answer to this question. The situation was beyond my direct control. I couldn’t drive into an evacuated zone in the dark and cruise the streets looking for my dog. I was helpless. The only thing I could do was practice what I preach, tolerating uncertainty. I knew I may never see Mojo again. But if that turned out to be the case, I’d have a chance to practice flexibility and resilience.
Things got worse. After the fire swept our condo complex it roared down the hill, jumped highway 101, and attacked Coffey Park, a dense suburban area where the dog boarders were located. As the news trickled in, it became obvious just how much human life was threatened. Uncertainty was the new normal for everyone. On Tuesday morning my daughter Rose went to work posting photos of Mojo on Facebook and calling all the animal shelters, but considering the destruction we feared the worst.
Then, 36 hours after the call from the dog boarder, I received another call. “Hello, is this Jennifer Shannon? I found your dog.” Oh joy! A young man and his girlfriend—dog owners/lovers themselves—spotted Mojo wandering the street and tried to pick him up. But Mojo was so traumatized he was running away from everyone and everything. This wonderful man chased Mojo for blocks, finally fishing him out of a swimming pool, getting bit for his troubles in the process. When I peered into the back seat of their car, little Mo looked back with wide, vacant eyes. He didn’t even recognize me.
There’s more to this story, of course. The vet who bandaged his bloody paws and didn’t charge for it. The folks who volunteered to foster Mojo until we found a place where we could keep him. There is so much love in the world in times of crisis. That’s one thing I can be certain about, even when I’m uncertain about everything else.
As a therapist and author who specializes in stress and anxiety, and has lost my home in the Santa Rosa fire, I am writing this blog to remind myself of the powerful tools I use in my practice with my clients. If It helps others to deal with their own challenges, nothing would please me more.
Oct 15, 2017 | Fire
By Jennifer Shannon, LMFT with Doug Shannon
Riding the Wave 
2 am Monday morning. I am awakened by the sound of my husband’s cell phone ringing. He doesn’t answer it and I reach for the light. The electricity is off. My throat feels raw and the air is thick with smoke. I leap out of bed shouting for Doug to wake up and my cell is ringing now. I answer it with one hand as I pull on pants with the other. Our friend Steve shouts in my ear, “Get out of there, right away!” “We are!” I answer.
Using cell phones as flashlights, Doug and I race through the dark house grabbing our laptops and photo albums. In the street outside a bullhorn voice bares, “Evacuate Now!” We throw what we’ve grabbed into the trunk of the car and as Doug pushes the garage door open, we see our neighbors loading into their cars, shadows in the white fog of headlights. The air is hot as a summer’s day and through the trees I see a glowing crimson. As I maneuver the car through the street, I grip the steering wheel tight, holding on to something solid as behind me, so much of what I love slips away.
Twenty minutes later I turn the key in the lock of my mother’s studio apartment in Sebastopol, 15 miles away from Santa Rosa CA. We wake her gently and flip on the TV in her bedroom. At 85 years-old, my mother is mildly cognitively impaired, but she is calm as we watch the news, trying to understand what happened. I feel like I’m dreaming yet I’m hyper alert and awake. We are alive, I think. It was a full-blown fight-freeze-flight situation and I responded. Thank you, monkey mind!
For the rest of the night and all morning my mind races, reliving our escape over and over. Monday afternoon, almost 24 hours exactly after the call that woke us, I receive a call from a trusted neighbor confirming that our home is burnt to the ground. It was as I expected. I felt numb. That night I collapse into a long deep sleep.
The next morning some friends call about a possible rental space and my husband and I go to see it. It is so rough with just a wood stove for heat. It would need much work, and it could never be home to me. That’s when the impact of what had happened hits. I am by nature a homebody and I loved my home. I need a place where I can recharge and regenerate. The simple comfort of my soft sheets to crawl into, my husband and dog to cuddle up with, is one of the greatest pleasures I have. My kitchen, where I love to cook and listen to music. My desk overlooking the Santa Rosa valley. It’s all gone! Our friends are talking to me about the place and about the fire but I can’t track what they are saying. I quietly tell Doug, “I need to go.”
In my work I teach my clients to welcome anxiety and other negative emotions, that they are natural expressions of the limbic brain that is devoted to our safety and survival, what I like to call the monkey mind. Now, here was the sorrow of loss, square in my path.
Back at my mother’s studio I sat on the couch next to her as she knitted. My body began to shake and I curled into her lap. My heart ached in the most literal sense of the word. “Put your hand on the back of my heart,” I said. I felt the warmth of her hand and let in penetrate. “I don’t have a home, I love my home,” I sobbed.
I cried for half an hour in my mother’s arms. I cried until I was dry and exhausted. I felt calm. My mind was empty. I was floating in the quiet trough until the next wave hit.
As a therapist and author who specializes in stress and anxiety, and has lost my home in the Santa Rosa fire, I am writing this blog to remind myself of the powerful tools I use in my practice with my clients. If It helps others to deal with their own challenges, nothing would please me more.
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