Calming Your Pre-Separation (Pre-Partnum) Fears

You've made your decision to leave.  Now you actually have to plan for it!

I am leaving for good in June.  Ticket has been booked!  Yet there is a lingering sense of apprehension for my trip.  Nothing compared to how I felt 5 am the very morning of  (and three weeks before) buying my ticket.

The Fight to Flight and Pre-Partum Fears

Before I go into how to stop feeling so nervous let me explain one thing.  There are two types of pre-Jump fears.  First is the decision phase.  Should I quit my job and follow my path to freedom or should I keep the status quo?  I call this the "fight to flight" because of the instinctive (and logical) reaction by the smarter side of you to keep your stable and comfortable life.  The second is the pre-separation fear.  It is the how am I going to quit and follow my new chosen path?  Our second fear I call "Pre-Partnum", a reference to postpartnum depression.  This post is on the second fear.  Mostly because I dealt with it most recently.

Pre-Pertnum

Or before parting with your life as you know it now.  Not a scary thought at all, is it?  Move out of the house with a lovely backyard and bubbling Jacuzzi, maybe sell the head-turning M-series, or maybe it's not the material things you'll miss.  The early morning coffee with your roommates from the same coffee maker you've had since college, Friday night hang-out with your friends at a local bar the list goes on and on.  How is this different than Fight to Flight?  You have made your decision and you know you must follow through with it.  There is very little fight to revert your decision back and more sadness and fear of the consequences of your impending trip.

How to ease your pre-partnum fear

Fear of parting will never fully go away until you strap on the ridiculous airplane seat-belt.  I say ridiculous because wearing the seat belt will not magically stop those strapped under it from plummeting to the ground at hundreds of miles per hour to an almost certain death.  But don't let my skepticism  discourage you from traveling.  Airplane crashes are rare.

From my experience and my experience only, here are the following remedies to ease your pre-partnum fears.  These fears include, but are not limited to, waking up at 5 am with a savage stomachache, constant nervousness, extreme fluctuations throughout the day between euphoria and a nervous breakdown, a nervous breakdown, diarrhea, constipation, cold sweat at night, inability to concentrate, a loss of appetite.  I had these all within a three week period and I still get a few of the above once in a while but at 5% of their former strength.

1) Take the first step.  Buy the ticket.  Buy it!!  Purchasing the airplane, bus, rickshaw, boat ticket is the very first step to alleviate symptoms.  Once I bought the ticket and let an electrifying jolt of excitement thunder through my body I felt a total sense of relaxation.  Clicking the "submit" button after entering my credit card information was my commitment to my plan.  Like anything else in this world, once you actually do it, everything else follows.  You're actually there, on the spot focusing on actively planning your next steps and not just thinking about it.  It is the same with writing an essay in college, working on a project for work or buying a car.  The task appears overwhelming from a distance.  Start working on it and the immensity of the project cuts down to smaller, manageable pieces.

2) Share your plans with more people.  One person isn't enough.  A marriage is not official unless others recognize it.  If no one knows of your plans, retracting from the plan is an easy thing to do.  Telling more people about your plans forces you to work towards your goal.  Friends and family will press you forward. Plus, saying your plans out loud helps organize your thoughts.  Enough verbal repetition and the plans and goals become believable.

3) Monitor expenses and savings.  Keeping track of finances reassures you are on track with projected savings for the transition period.  Checking the savings account every hour is not advised.  If this is happening, you may want to postpone your adventure.

4) Go to bed early.  Falling asleep at 1 am makes the body feel tired and puts it in a subpar mental and physical condition increasing anxiety and depression.

5) Go to bed late.  But that contradicts point 4!  If the previous point has no positive effect on your body or you simply cannot go to bed early for whatever reason, go to bed late.  Sleeping late exhausts the mind and body to the point that waking up frequently throughout the night or at an inconvenient time (think 3 minutes before your alarm goes off) .

6) Eat plenty of yogurt.  Stress can either loosen the bowels or cause your intestines to back up like a clogged sewage pipe.  Yogurt keeps those pipes clean and strangely enough helps reduce the times you go to the bathroom (at least for me it does).

There are many other stress-reduction strategies.  Some I have tried others I haven't.  Right now I'm just too exhausted to continue writing.  I'm following my own advice and practicing point 5.  Goodnight!