One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies, Spinal Tap, is where Nigel is talking about his amps: These go to 11.

Looking back over my last few newsletters, I can see the anxiety building.

This morning, I opened my computer to log in and write this newsletter. The lock screen asked for a password, so I put it in and pushed return.

Wrong.

OK. That’s fine. Maybe I mistyped. I reentered and pushed return.

Wrong.

I watched my fingers, carefully typing what I knew was my correct password.

Wrong.

Now I’m locked out.

As happens to everyone, this one small inconvenience is what tapped into my building anxiety and sent me straight to the very top of my limit. I started to cry tense, angry tears. I started to talk to myself: “What the fuck is going on?” I catastrophized, worrying I wouldn’t be able to get my computer back—a computer I’d just gotten over the holidays from my parents and my son.

Then, my son comes out of his room and I ask if he’d downloaded the recent software update and if anything like this had ever happened to him. No, he told me, sitting in front of my computer googling ways to unlock a Mac when it won’t open even when you’ve used the correct password.

“Did you hear me losing it out here?” I asked.

Yes, he answered, and when I asked why he hadn’t come out to see if I was OK, he told me he thought that maybe something had happened to his Nanny (my mother) and he was scared.

OK. Why am I telling you all this? Especially when the subject line talks about rebooting the light instead of leaning further into the anxiety.

Because there are lessons, as always, in reaching our limits.

• Talking to my son helped me recenter: Name it to tame it. (We talked about that before.)

• Being intentional in walking back my catastrophic thinking: What is the worst thing that could happen if I couldn’t get back into my computer? Would the world end? Would I die?

• Letting the people who love me help me. We are so conditioned to see strength as solitary. But, the real strength is being able to ask for and accept help, to rely on the people who love you and trust that love. Ben wasn’t as activated in the moment as I was; he loves me and wanted to help.

I know none of the above is groundbreaking or even new or original. And, to be honest, that’s kind of the beautiful thing. What’s old is new again.

So, my invitation to you today is to think about ways to really see the love that surrounds you and fully trust that when you find yourself at 11 you are not alone.

Ask yourself: What helps me experience my community as loving and trustworthy? What makes asking for help easier for me?

The Light Links

25 ways to ask for help that actually work (and aren’t scary)

This is Spinal Tap

What is life?