Substitutions

“I can’t get it out of my head,” my son wails. He is in bed, the lights are out, story time is over, his songs are playing and he is melting down. “It’s too scary and I can’t stop thinking about it!”
This time it’s about a boy who uses a time machine to meet his sixty-one year-old-self and thus seemed to get old all of a sudden, which is the scary part. Note, ‘this time.’
He insists that sleep is impossible and that I have to stay with him, growing more and more upset. I intervene with the usual, “Honey, honey. Relax.” To me it represents a combination of ‘I care about you’ with ‘I want this to stop now’. “Listen, if I say ‘Don’t think about oranges’ then the image that comes to mind is of oranges.” My son looks at me as if I’m crazy, maybe I am. But I carry on, embellishing. “Really, don’t think about the lively color of oranges, don’t remember the fresh citrus scent of oranges, don’t imagine the juicy burst in your mouth when you eat oranges.” I am definitely in an orange zone, now both of us crave them. “In order to stop thinking about oranges, we have to think about something else, like apples, or going swimming.”
He laughs at my story and how silly it is becoming and I shift gears to the idea that in order to get away from one thought you have to substitute a new one. This brings a whole new round of “but I can’t stop thinking about it!”
I choose not to mention that he was just laughing and that he had stopped thinking about it for a moment or two. Instead we talk about what would be a good thing for him to think about from his list of interests.
I walk away from my son’s room and I’ve convinced him to at least be quiet, even if he’s sure this won’t work. He inherited the tendency to fixate on things from me, so I know what he’s dealing with. I regularly think about pleasant things so the news shows don’t prevent me from sleeping (they are the scariest things I see on TV). As I’ve gotten older, I use much more subtle substitutions with the hope of improving my character. But my most recent personal pet peeve has hit a snag, and thinking about oranges or apples isn’t helping.
Lately, I’ve been feeling quite self-conscious. I often have a child with me-- I know what to do with and for the child, I feel comfortable. I understand how to use most situations to help the child’s development and how to manage the kinds of social interactions generated by cute kids. But I feel conspicuous when it’s just me. What do I substitute for self-consciousness? Other-consciousness? Obviously, when I’m conscious of a child in my care, I’m fine. When I’m alone, though, other-consciousness makes me more aware of the other people who I already feel self-conscious around. So that isn’t working.
As I remember those moments, I have the nervous feeling of others watching me and I’m trying to understand what they are seeing and what it might mean to them. ‘And I can’t stop thinking about it!’ So I tell myself to relax, and I try to figure out what I can focus on instead. I’m not sure, but perhaps the key is here. In those moments, I feel observed and I start observing myself (yes, it does require a strange sort of flexibility) rather that focusing on what I’m doing. Maybe if I choose not to be so flexible and simply focus on the task at hand, I won’t notice. I don’t know. But I’ve convinced myself to be quiet, even if I’m not sure this will work.