Let me start by explaining something about myself. As a child, I had an irrational fear of "chemicals", specifically things like Lysol, Bleach, SOS scrubber pads, floor cleaners, carpet cleaners, toilet cleaners...anything that you would use to clean something besides soap and water or rubbing alcohol or a non-toxic wipe. I was TERRIFIED of them. If I ever accidently stepped on a freshly mopped floor, a freshly shampooed carpet, or touched a freshly bleached dish or countertop, I just knew that was the end of me. I just knew that "chemical" was going to somehow get absorbed into my body through my skin, and that shortly after, I was going to die. (I could even die by showering or bathing in a freshly, chemically-cleaned bathtub because, what if it wasn't rinsed properly, and what if the steam from the hot water made me inhale some toxic fumes from the cleaning products?!) My mom had to rinse our tub multiple times before I would get into it after she cleaned it.
(Looking back at things like this, I can see how I may have developed OCD as an adult...)
Fast-forward to the present, when I decided to be a "real adult" and clean my bathtub myself, with actual cleaning products instead of asking my mom to do it. (My mom knew I had this irrational fear of death by "chemicals" and so was always willing to do it.) Had I grown out of my irrational fear of being exposed to "chemicals"? Apparently not, my friends. I even had gloves on, but that didn't stop the panic that welled up inside me as soon as I was wrist-deep in blue SOS-colored water, trying to scrub my bathtub. I JUST KNEW that "chemical" was going to somehow absorb through my gloves, through my skin, and I was going to die because I had touched it.
That fear sounds so child-like doesn't it? I never hear of adults being so afraid of things like Lysol, Bleach, SOS scrubber pads, and other cleaning products that they have a panic attack when forced to touch them. I brought that up with my therapist in our phone session this weekend.
My therapist was quick to point out that my fear didn't make me childish. She explained that my fear of the cleaning "chemicals" had resulted in traumatic experiences during childhood in which I was sure I was going to die. As a result of that trauma, the fear part of my brain had sort of unpacked and lived in that young age in which the trauma had occurred. The part that held this fear hadn't grown up along with the rest of me, so to speak, which is often how trauma and fear work inside our minds. So, during this process of cleaning my bathtub, that fear piece of my brain from childhood resurfaced, and I experienced it all over again.
Adult me had to meet child me as I completed my triggering task. I had to be kind and understanding with that child self still living inside the adult if I wanted to be able to process my fear. Believing you're going to fall over dead because you accidently got something on your skin is a traumatic experience for anyone, but especially for a child. I made sure not to think to myself that the fear was silly or stupid. (Although I did acknowledge that it was an irrational fear.) I acknowledged that felt like the real fear that my childhood self was sure it was, but then I told myself, "I'm an adult now, and I even have gloves on. I've touched this accidently before and survived. I'll survive this time, too. I don't have to be terrified. I just have to be careful. I've seen my mother use these very cleaning products for years WITHOUT GLOVES, and she's not dead. So, I can be okay."
I had to meet the fear on it's own level, and then treat it like the developmental age it was frozen in without judgement. Once I did that, and I talked myself through it, I was able to complete the task. By the time I finished, I had stopped crying, at least, and I no longer thought I was going to die. I was still anxious, but I wasn't having a full-on panic attack.
I'll end with this: As adults, we often judge ourselves for the fears that resulted from trauma (both "small" and "big" traumas) that we experienced as children, especially if that fear plays a part in a mental illness that develops later. We often feel silly or embarrassed if something happens that triggers the memory of that childhood traumatic experience and the fear in our adult lives, and we try to dismiss it. (I felt embarrassed crying into my bathtub as I battled with the fear that I was going to die because of the cleaning products I was using. I felt even worse when I linked the obsessive way I used to worry about that to my OCD diagnosis from adulthood.) Dismissing it won't heal that child-like fear inside us, though. To heal that child-like fear, we have to meet it at the development level it lives in, and we have to be kind to it, to lend it that feeling of adult-like safety before it can heal.
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