"Stay Mentally Where Your Feet Are"
- Debi Borger
- May 20, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: May 23, 2024
“Stay Mentally Where Your Feet Are.” How I overcame a period of depression and anxiety.
-Debi Borger
I will never forget the day I heard these 6 words spoken in one of my first AA meetings, 3 months shy of 10 years of sobriety.
I was spinning. The word “spinning” doesn’t even describe the feeling because that word implies movement. Technically, I was frozen and the world was spinning around me.
Although I knew exactly what was happening to me, I had never personally experienced it first-hand and couldn’t understand WHY it was happening to ME.
After all,
I AM STRONG.
I AM INDEPENDENT.
I AM a SURVIVOR!
I AM BROKEN.
I opened my eyes on December 24 th and looked around the room. It was familiar. I was in my sister’s guest bedroom, the light starting to come through the gray curtains. “Why doesn’t she have black-out curtains,” I thought to myself. The comforter felt warm and safe. I recognized the old antique dry sink because it belonged to my grandparents and was then given to me. She kept it for me when I moved.
Moved? That’s right! I thought, I live in Costa Rica! Why was I here?
This was the exact moment the world began to spin around me. My heart began to race, I got chills up and down my arms, my face felt warm and I began to feel nauseous. I sprung out of bed, ran to the bathroom and threw up whatever food I had tried to eat on the plane from Panama to Ft. Lauderdale the day before.
Cleaning myself up, I went back to bed, pulling the covers over my head for hours.
When I woke up again, around midnight that evening, it all began to sink in. My world, my
future, my safety had all been turned upside down in an unexpected instant.
Suddenly, I was having another panic attack. My hands were in tight fists this time and my jaw was tightly clenched. It was the middle of the night, and my heart rate and breathing began to race again.
This cycle repeated itself for days on end… until I heard those 6 words.
“Stay mentally where your feet are.”
Every time I woke up and my world began to spin, I would pull the covers back over my head and concentrate on my feet, repeating the words,
“I am safe. I am protected. Stay mentally where my feet are.”
Every time I began to #futuretrip and think about the long and difficult
road ahead of me, I would remind myself that-
nothing needs to be done right now. Nothing needs to be decided right now. Just stay mentally where your feet are.
Every time I panicked about where I would live, how I would make money, restart my business, (or if I even wanted too) I would repeat these words…
“Just stay mentally where my feet are.”
I had to force myself to slow down, to stop even.
To heal.
To sleep.
To breathe.
To be present in the moment.
I had to admit to myself that, yes, even I broke after having everything that made
me feel safe, secure and in control of my life was unexpectedly pulled out from underneath me.
Yet thinking about the past and "tripping about the future" was not going to help my sympathetic nervous system come out of the state of fight & flight that it had been in for so long.
Only I could do that.
And that’s just what I did.
There was a tune I kept listening to on repeat every night to help me fall asleep. Its tones are meant to calm the nervous system, which it did then, but now when I hear the first 3 notes my heart starts to race, my stomach flip flops and I get chills throughout my body as it reminds me of where I was then.
I began to supplement with Ashwagandha, Magnesium and Melatonin to
help get my sleep pattern back on track, and I always keep a bottle of Dr. Wilson’s Super Adrenal Stress Formula on hand.
I’m not too proud to admit that I needed professional and medicinal help at the time, and still do, but it helped me get my appetite back and regain some of the 15lbs that I had quickly lost.
After about 10 days, I was slowly able to get up and moving around. If I couldn’t get myself into the gym, I would at least take the dog for a walk and talk it out on the phone with my loved ones.
As I mentioned before, I started attending online AA meetings and found an amazing
group of women whom I met with every morning, 7 days a week, who helped guide me into “emotional sobriety.”
Lastly, I leaned on others. I let others take care of me and help me get not only my physical strength back, but my mental and emotional strength back too. It was draining and exhausting. It still is.
Yet, in needing others and allowing them to help me, I experienced the full realization
that:
I was not on my own in the world, nor did I have to be.
There isn’t an award at the end of your life for “Most Independent.” I also realized that although I had no control over THIS situation,
I DID have control over how I was going to grow through it and who I was going to be
when I came out the other side.
Yes, by staying mentally where my feet were in that moment.
To be honest, I don’t really remember much of that time, just bits and pieces here and there. I know there were some holidays and even my birthday at one point. Our brain protects us from trauma through dissociative amnesia…temporarily. What I DO know is that when I think back to those 2 months of recovery, and then to where I am now, I am so amazed at the
I found within myself to heal and grow. A lot of which was given to me by others as well.
So much so, that my goal is to give back. I aim to help others through coaching and motivation discover their inner strength... physically, emotionally & mentally.
Join me next month as I talk more about HOW I STAYED mentally where my feet are, the people I turned to and more techniques I used. Feel free to reach out for a free 30 minute discovery call to debi@debwellbeing.com.
If you, or anyone you know, is suffering from depression or anxiety, here are some resources to help:
Suicide and Crisis Hotline #: 988
Yolanda Yvette Berger, Licensed Clinical Social Worker & Certified Addiction Specialist
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