So my house got broken into.  While I was asleep and home alone.  As you can imagine, I was terrified, but I also learned some things about anxiety.  Now it’s my duty to share those lessons with you so you can learn from my experience and hopefully never have to go through it yourself.  Here’s the story.

At First, Everything Was Calm…

Let me set the scene.  My husband was out of town, in another state actually.  And he was working overnight, so we had spoken earlier in the evening when he was between cases.  I’m a creature of routine, so right on schedule I started doing my nightly dance of letting the dogs out, brushing my teeth, and getting everything ready so I could snuggle into my bed right on time.  I closed the bedroom door, plugged my phone in, kissed the pups, turned off the lamp, and slumbered away. Within moments, I’m waist deep in some good sleep…like the kind of sleep when you wake up and you’re not sure where you are or what day it is.  Good sleep.

But Then Things Changed…

A while later, the dogs started barking.  Not super unusual…maybe they heard a dog in the neighborhood bark, maybe one barked in their dream and then scared the other one so then they both started barking, who knows?  Not a big deal.  

But this bark was different.  This was a defensive, scared bark I’d never heard from them.  Ava was clawing and digging at the bedroom door and barking.  Meanwhile, Bailey was cowering behind me.  The barking was so loud I couldn’t hear anything else, but it just felt like something was wrong.  

So I turned on the lamp and start listening. I thought I heard something, but I wasn’t sure. I was terrified and didn’t know what to do.  I texted my husband that the dogs were upset and scared and I didn’t know why. 

Something Wasn’t Right…

Then suddenly I know I heard something.  I wasn’t sure what, but it was definitely something.  Something inside my house. I was terrified, didn’t know what to do.  I felt so helpless. Instead of any sort of weapon under my bed, what I had was a maltese crawling on my head.  

Then someone in my house said my name, y’all.  

Someone Was Definitely In My Home…

Two things: I absolutely knew there was a person in my home now and that person knows who I am.  

But the voice wasn’t scary or intimidating.  It was a woman. I couldn’t hear what she was saying because of the barking, but I felt safer.  So timidly, I opened my bedroom door.  

And I saw it was my next-door neighbor, standing just outside my bedroom.  She said my husband sent her over to check on me because he was worried.  

What Happened?

Let’s back up.  I talked to my husband earlier in the night.  Then I went to bed at the same time as always. He then called me at that time….and 13 more times in the minutes thereafter.  When I didn’t answer, his anxiety told him I had stood up too quickly, gotten lightheaded, fell and hit my head on the countertop, and was lying in a pool of my own blood in the kitchen.  He was panicked. So he sent the neighbors to break into the house to check on me….and spread the panic.  

Thankfully, my house was broken into for the most compassionate reason and by some of the most helpful neighbors I could ever ask for.  They’ve saved us more than once. But until I knew that, I.was.terrified. Absolutely terrified. And although I’m no stranger to anxiety, I learned a few more things from this experience.  

Here’s What This Midnight Break-In Taught Me About Anxiety

1. When there’s doubt about what’s happening, your brain will assume something bad is happening.  

Your brain is never like, “Hey, you haven’t checked your bank account in a while.  Don’t worry, someone probably deposited a huge check in there, and you’re good.” No.  Every single time, your brain is gonna say, “Hey, you haven’t checked your bank account in a while.  You probably have 15 overdraft fees and I’ll bet someone has stolen your identity.”  

So when your dogs start barking in the middle of the night, you know your brain isn’t imagining that it’s your sweet neighbors just coming to check on you.  Your brain tells you it’s some sort of Edward-Scissorhands-looking person coming to chop you into pieces and feed you to your own dogs.  Similarly, when my husband couldn’t reach me, his brain didn’t assume I had just gone to sleep at bedtime like I do every single night and that my phone was mistakenly put on silent.  No, his brain told him I was certainly on the verge of death.  

Whenever there is doubt, our brains are wired to anticipate danger and problems.  That’s how our brains keep us alive. From a survival perspective, it’s much more effective for our brains to assume a snake is poisonous and make us stay away from it than it is for our brains to assume this one snake might be friendly and then get a bite that kills us.  So sometimes we have to outsmart our own brains and know when it’s just tricking us into thinking something terrible is about to happen…versus when something terrible actually is about to happen.  

I put together a PDF to help you do just that.  This PDF helps you talk to your brain and walk it from the certain-death assumption it’s making to the other possibilities.  Then you can more strategically assess what’s actually happening.