The Great Leg Uncrossing Experiment

For a few months now, I’ve been spiraling into this horribly unproductive way of speaking to people. I was stressed and easily agitated, but at least I could escape now and again to try and calm down. Then I got a 3 am phone call saying my dad was in the hospital, had a stroke, and everything changed – as did my defense mechanisms. Suddenly I was a raging ball of fire, spewing snark at anyone who dared utter a “hello” to me. I looked a mess, I felt a mess, and my productivity bottomed out as I could barely focus on the simplest of tasks. My own internal Hell had broken loose and started firing out at anyone I thought was hurting me.

Of course, though it was relieving to be brutally honest with everything I said and to release that pent up rage, it didn’t do so much good for my relationships with the people around me. I started to get the sense that I was firing off at people who didn’t deserve it, and didn’t want to be that “snappy bitch, don’t ask her anything”.

I can't be the only one in the world who gets like that.

So today I did an experiment, based on an article I read on Entrepreneur (side note, I saw the TED talk that was referenced quite some months ago). I decided that for at least one day, I would give up sitting with my legs crossed. To ensure I would stay on track, I put a rubber band around my arm so I could snap it every time I caught myself doing it. I was only accountable to myself; nobody else would know or see what I was doing.

The result? Between 12:00 pm and 4:00 pm I had already lost track of how many times I snapped the rubber band, and almost caved into my body’s uncomfortable pleas twice. I also am writing this to you sitting with my feet nicely placed apart.

While I did notice a slight change in my interactions, I also discovered something I had never noticed about myself:

I have such a fear of vulnerability that I will do whatever it takes, physically or mentally, 

to avoid being open to pain.

The discomfort I felt keeping my legs straight was a reaction to my midsection suddenly being left unguarded; I was no longer affording my body the ability to close into itself. My uncrossed legs also brought something new to my awareness: it is far more painful to hunch over when your legs are straight . But I definitely found myself hunching more than a few times. With option 1 being removed, my body was doing whatever it could to protect my midsection.

How deeply rooted are my fears to keep me in a perpetual fetal position as I move through life, forever damned to simply react to those pushing and prodding at my curled back until I lash out, retreating right back into the comfort of my own arms? Just how hard has life beaten me down until I no longer attempted to try and pick up the broken pieces but instead, hovered over the smashed figurine convinced the shards were as valuable as the masterpiece used to be? How many demons have not only taken abode in my psyche but have become the manipulator to my marionette, yanking my strings this way and that until I lost all sense of control?

There is no easy button for this, no quick answer, and I’m pretty sure that as soon as I get home I will give myself permission to cross my legs again. That’s probably when I will need to keep them straight the most.

UPDATE: It took a few days, but I now sit very normally with my legs uncrossed, particularly at work. I have started to breathe and sit better, and my mood has calmed down a bit. Maybe there is something to this stuff.