#polarbearshit
Before I left for New York, I was discussing my upcoming trip on a call with my mind body coaching cohort and one of our instructors warned me everyone I came across would have disregulated nervous systems. I laughed, not knowing how true that statement would turn out to be.
On our final day in New York City, the day after presenting at NYU Langone, we spent the morning at Central Park. I was riding adrenaline from all the travel, from giving my very first presentation in front of an auditorium full of people and just navigating the city in general. Cody and I stopped at a coffee shop (my biggest complaint about the coffee is that there seems to be an inability to serve beverages at anything over room temperature) before walking the park (beautiful) and discovering nearly everyone jogs in this city. The culture shock of being small town Canadians in big city America was not lost on us.
As we were about to diverge for lunch, I randomly opened my email to find a message from our airline. Our flight had been cancelled for unspecified reasons, and we were to fly out the next day. This wasn’t going to work, for a number of reasons. So plans of lunch were abandoned as we looked for a cab to take us back to the hotel to grab our bags, which were being held for us as we weren’t supposed to fly out until later that night, and made a mad dash for the airport.
For all jokes about Canadian money looking like Monopoly money, I will say that having different coloured bills does make it easier to identify the stash of money in your wallet isn’t just singular dollar bills (also the not having dollar bills helps with that problem). This is an important piece later in the story. We hop in a cab, in New York City traffic that already makes me anxious as a default, and I’m bordering on heart attack by the time we get to our destination.
Now we did the smart tourist thing and didn’t have any credit cards, large sums of money or anything that could be beneficial for theft. We had a singular card with no tap, and a handful of bills. As we arrive at the hotel, the cab driver says he has to park a block away because the road is closed due to some parade. As we go to leave, we discover the card reader in this cab isn’t working. We discover the cash we did have turns out to be singular dollar bills.
I’m stressed from the traffic, from potentially not having a flight home, and now this cab driver is giving us orders in a vaguely threatening tone that I am to stay in the cab while Cody goes to an ATM (I will also add here for clarity apparently their banks have something on the door where you have to scan your card to get in. We, again being small town friendly Canadian folk, do not have this.) This is not a safe situation, and we don’t have great options. Option 1. I stay in the cab and Cody finds an ATM. Option 2. Cody stays in the cab and I navigate the chaos of New York to try to find an ATM. Option 3 of just leaving the cab unpaid because it’s not our fault the card reader wasn’t working doesn’t even cross our minds. I will also add that another level of discomfort to this whole situation is that New Yorkers uphold their reputation of being not the kindest people (I thought that was a stereotype - it’s not. I thought the friendly Canadian was a stereotype - we actually are) and we are in a foreign country where concealed weapons are legal.
We choose the first option, and I stay in the cab. The cabs only open from one side, so as Cody exits the cab I scoot over to be beside the door. Just in case. This sets the cab driver off, and as soon as the door shuts, he locks it. He is screaming at me, partly in English and partly in some language I couldn’t recognize. I have no way of getting out of the cab, and every Law and Order episode I’ve ever seen comes back to me at rapid speed.
Being aware of the nervous system, I’m also realizing at the time that I need to appease this cab driver because I don’t know whats going to happen next. So I just start talking, reassuring him, trying to keep my voice as calm as possible. I don’t remember what I said. It doesn't matter. In this moment I am making myself appear as non-threatening as possible. I have no way to know if this person actually would hurt me over a $20 cab fair, or if he is just trying to scare me. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and go with the latter but I was aware. As I was debriefing this encounter with my therapist after I got home, she pointed out if this cab driver was having this reaction to me, imagine the things he’s seen and the disregulation of his own nerves system.
Eventually Cody returns, we figure out the cab situation and get out. We grab our bags, endure another chaotic cab ride to the airport. I go up to the woman working at the Air Canada desk and I tell her my story, still gasping for breath. I explain that I really need to get back to Canada and cannot stay in this city for another day. I would have hugged her if I could have because she got us on a flight leaving in exactly an hour, detouring through Toronto and would have us back in Edmonton late that night.
By the time we arrive in Toronto for our layover, I’m starting to feel sick. I think it’s because I haven’t eaten (lunch was skipped due to the cancellation). I force myself to eat a sandwich and before I know it we’re boarding the plane for our flight home.
The flight from Toronto to Edmonton is about 4 hours, and we’re not even an hour into the air when I realize this isn’t going my way. I take pain meds, begging my body to keep it together until we’re back on the ground. It’s no use. I attempt to distract myself. I use every coping technique I can possibly think of in that moment.
We are in the air somewhere over Manitoba when pain explodes in my body. I am curled over on the seat making myself as tiny as possible when the flight attendant brings me ice and advil (despite every recommendation to avoid NSAID’s as a transplant recipient, I take it because i’m dying here)
We’re somewhere over Saskatchewan when I realize whats happening. The day prior I’d given a speech where I referenced the story of a polar bear, and how in situations of activation one of the ways the primal body will release the charge is to just shake. It’s how we complete stress cycles. If we don’t willingly complete the cycle, the body will find other ways to work around the stress. It can cause things like extreme pain.
I’d never had an opportunity to breathe much less move all the energy I felt about that cab ride, and the chaos of the city in general. It was just sitting in my nervous system. I had to be “on” while working, and on high alert navigating a foreign city, and I never had time to release that stress pattern my body was holding.
And so my body did it for me, in the air.
We touch down in Edmonton, where I have literally been counting the minutes, and as people leave the plane we get disability services to meet us.
It took me weeks to come down to some feeling of normalcy again. All the tension my body was holding, the activation in my nervous system, needed to go somewhere. The body doesn’t speak through words, she speaks through symptoms and sensation. So the sensation I was feeling in my body that I was labeling as pain was my body telling me it had enough. We could no longer sustain that level of activation.
The phrase “Polar bear shit” has become common in my household. It’s referencing the shaking, moving, sounding and otherwise working through energy to release it. I’m just doing polar bear shit. Just moving my body so it doesn’t get traumatized. Just allowing myself to complete stress cycles.
That trip reminded me of how lucky I am to have these tools. Not only so I could modulate my own nervous system experience to respond to other people’s disregulation, but that my body in her wisdom knows how to move to release what she is holding, and how to communicate so clearly and loudly to make sure i’m listening.
