Tornado Anxiety
Find out what you’re afraid of and go live there. – Chuck Palahniuk
May 7, 1984. Twenty-three tornadoes struck Tennessee that day. One of them, an F3, swirled through my sleepy town, winding among three different schools that held 2,500 children. All were spared that day. I laid on my orange mat in the Kindergarten classroom, watching the giant oak tree swaying outside the west-facing wall of the building, which contained multiple floor-to-ceiling glass window panes. I could feel my heart racing as my gaze shifted from the oak tree to my teacher’s face, as worry crept across like a darkening sky. Her expression was one of those that only adults get, kind of like when they know something a kid doesn’t, but they want to hold onto it a little longer.
I was somewhat of a precocious child, to put it mildly. To be honest, I was downright neurotic. Still am. I attribute a large part of my neuroses to my mother, who has a flair for the dramatic. She also had a tendency to extrapolate outlandish conclusions from the most benign facts. Something I now call catastrophizing. An itch could mean a case of head lice. Spider bite? Gotta be poisonous. Phone rings after 9pm, must mean someone has died. Whatever the genetic mutation or chemical imbalance that contributes to the biological part of anxiety, I am certain mother has it and passed it on. As for the rest, I learned by her example.
Anxiety is a future-focused emotion about the “what-ifs.” What if get sick? What if I forget to pay the bill? What if I lose my job? What if I fail? Fear often goes hand-in-hand with anxiety, but it is more present-focused. I learned early on that having fear seemed to make me better at things. And it was fun. I guess that’s why anxious people sometimes do jobs you would not expect, such as first responders. Or the reason all my anxious clients love to watch crime shows on TV. Harnessing and managing the initial fear can go a long way in alleviating the anxiety long-term. I loved gymnastics as a child, but I had this giant fear of going backwards, having my arms give out and landing on my head, especially on the gym floor. I often overthought every movement, to the point that I would become immobilized. I still vividly recall the day I decided to just FEEL the fear in my body and not think, not distract myself. To run toward the fear. I felt a huge adrenaline rush and relied on muscle memory to perform a series of back handsprings down the gym floor. Thirteen in a row. Weird that I still remember that. Probably because I counted. I always counted everything. And I love numbers. They give me a sense of control and order.
Fast forward to April of 1998. I was in my second year of college at Bethel in McKenzie, TN. I woke up to an eerie green sky. I spent the day watching WSMV’s chief meteorologist Bill Hall. From my aunt’s basement this time. Thirteen tornadoes came through middle Tennessee that day, two of which struck Nashville about 90 minutes apart. I guess this was around the time that meteorologists began to be able to predict an exact timeline of when a storm was going to hit a particular area. Every few minutes, there would be a listing on the screen of small towns with a different time next to them, a few minutes apart. It was both terrifying and fascinating that the technology was able to pinpoint this. For someone with anxiety, there is nothing worse than the unknown. And science had taken away a lot of questions and uncertainty surrounding severe weather.
Fast forward to May 6 of 2003. My first night in my new home in Paducah, KY. I didn’t have my cable set up yet and smart phones weren’t even a thing. That night, another tornado outbreak, an F1 came within a couple of miles to the South, an F4 hit just across the state line in Illinois. That was the first time since childhood that I did not have the play-by-play of what was going on. I vowed then to learn all I could about storms and weather. The knowledge and the numbers served to calm me down. And there are so many cool phenomena and weather terms. CAP. CAPE. PWAT values. Bombogenesis. Crepuscular Rays. Derecho. Bow Echo. And my all-time favorite, squall line.
Even with some knowledge, I still needed a proper shelter. So I had a storm shelter put into the concrete floor of my garage. And I’ve been in that shelter more times than I can count. I am currently painting it to look like Batman’s bat cave so my kids will think it is cool. And in case you are wondering, I talk to my kids about storms in a very different way than you might expect, given my anxiety. We take it seriously, but I educate them on the terms, how we get information and how to stay safe in the storm. They are too little to understand now, but when they are older, we will talk numbers. Like the probability of a tornado hitting any one spot, but how in the world of weather, things can change quickly. As one of the weather folks says, “Be prepared, not scared.”
On the night of December 10, 2021, I was watching the weather. On the TV and on my phone. Checking the local radar as well. At this point, I should mention the most important part of getting through a situation like this when you have anxiety and a life-long fear of storms. The human piece. On that night, it came from three different local meteorologists. Beau Dodson Weather on Facebook, whom I have followed since 2009 with the ice storm, Trent Okerson with WPSD since 2007 and Noah Bergren with WPSD since 2019. All three did an amazing job of communicating the seriousness of the situation while staying calm. Sometimes people accuse forecasters of adding “hype” to their stories, I guess to increase viewership, or maybe sell milk and bread before a snowstorm? I have never found that to be true of these three, I trust them completely. As I heard things I had never heard a meteorologist say on air, I became acutely aware of the gravity of the situation.
Seeing the aftermath, reading the countless stories of survivors who fled at the last minute because they chose to heed the weather guys’ warnings, I have no doubt in my mind they saved thousands of lives. And then come the other numbers, the ones that do not offer solace. So very many are dealing with inconceivable loss and grief right now, and I am so very sorry that even one life was lost. At the same time, I am so thankful for science, for technology, for weather guys, even for social media at this moment.
I think I am learning to make peace with my own anxiety. I am listening to it more. Sometimes our anxiety and fear is our body’s way of telling us something is not right. But the funny thing about anxiety is – when you run to it, it runs away.
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