Calgon, take me away!
Do you remember the commercial from the late 80’s for Calgon bath powder?
It’s a classic that has spawned many a spinoff meme.
In the commercial, a woman, stressed by the traffic! The boss! The baby! The dog! hits her breaking point and cries out, “Calgon, take me away!”
She’s then magically whisked away to a luxurious and soothing bath in a gorgeous tub where she loses all her cares. Aaaaaah.
Unfortunately, it’s not really like that in the real world. You can’t just magically whisk yourself away from stressful moments and land in a bath or on a Hawaiian beach or in the middle of a field of flowers.
(It seems unfair, I agree.)
People sometimes try to access that feeling, though, through picturing themselves in their head being in a different place than where they are. It’s called daydreaming, and it’s what some of us do when we’re stressed out and want to escape reality.
To be sure, daydreaming is a healthier way of escaping than, say, drinking a bottle of wine or smoking pot, but it’s still not considered an effective resource for managing your emotions or regulating your nervous system.
Why?
It has to do with the escape part. Any kind of escape—whether it’s daydreaming an alternate reality or numbing through a mind-altering substance—are about disconnecting from reality. And though that might feel temporarily good, it doesn’t build resilience.
And look, it doesn’t have to be daydreaming or a mind-altering substance to escape reality—I used to see how my yoga students treated a yoga class the same way.
Rather than see a yoga class as a place to reconnect with themselves and their embodied resources, they saw it more as a way to disconnect from the things that were stressing them out. That’s different.
There’s a set of terms from Buddhist philosophy called far enemies and near enemies. Far enemies are things that are the exact opposite of the desired state: for example, cruelty is a far enemy of compassion.
Near enemies are things that are similar in essence to the desired state, but not the same: pity is a near enemy of compassion.
As you might guess, it’s the near enemies that are the problem. Because most people who have been around self-awareness for a minute can sniff out a far enemy from a mile away and have become decent at avoiding them, but sometimes the near enemies sneak under the radar and can have the same unintended outcome.
To tie it together, drinking or smoking to oblivion are far enemies of nervous system regulation. But day dreaming and using yoga classes as a place of escape are near enemies; they seem better, but they don't help you regulate your nervous system in a way that grows resilience.
So what’s the real deal version of calgon, take me away?
It’s bringing to mind a place you feel good—which could be soaking in a bath tub, or reclining on a warm beach, or sitting in the middle of a field of wild flowers (like the ones my husband and I got to go sit in in the Carrizo Plains last weekend), and rather than imagining you’re there, bring into your body your awareness of how it feels when you are there.
Expansive, perhaps. Free. Grounded. And then right there where you are—whether it’s next to your kid who’s having a melt down or in the car stuck in massive traffic—bring that place you’d want to escape to to you and feel it’s effect in your body.
Which is to say, the resource is in the way it makes you feel to be there, not having to actually go there. And that’s good news, because it works a lot faster. And it’s a lot cheaper.
I’ve had clients use this technique as one of their favorites for regulating—to pick a place that’s meaningful to them, maybe from childhood, or from a sweet moment on a vacation—and look for the feeling in their body that place evokes in them.
If you haven’t tried this before, I encourage you to bring to mind a place you’d pay a not insignificant amount of money to go to if you could, and then imagine what it would feel like to be there. Bring it into your body and let yourself feel its effects.
No Calgon needed.
Want more practices for regulating your nervous system? Check out my Linkedin Course Reduce Stress and Anxiety By Managing Your Nervous System.