Groundhog Day & Disastrous First Dates
What a panic attack and a 30-year-old movie taught me about breaking free.
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My very first date was a disaster. My mom drove us—a great start to any dating story, I know—to the opening of Groundhog Day, the now-classic Bill Murray movie about a man reliving the same day until getting it just right. I didn’t enjoy the movie that day. In fact, I hated it for years afterward. It's so boring, I'd say, just the same thing over and over again.
Looking back at it now, it’s clear to me that it wasn’t boredom that was being triggered, but anxiety…and shame. Because while the rest of the audience was enjoying Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell at their absolute best, I was frozen, experiencing what I now recognize as the first of many panic attacks that would continue to terrorize me for decades to come.
Standing in line for tickets, the button-down shirt I’d regretfully chosen to wear felt like it was getting tighter and tighter around my throat with every pop of corn in the distance. The line dragged on—inch by excruciating inch—and there I was, mind blank as can be. If not for the undercurrent of terror coursing through my veins, I might have thought I’d reached some strange state of enlightenment: no thoughts, just silence. What did humans talk about again?
“So…uhhh…did you…”
I can’t remember if there was an endpoint to that sentence when I started speaking, but it sure wasn’t by the time I got there. So that was it—our entire conversation in line. Just a half-formed sentence, followed by a forced smile, some awkward shuffling of the feet, and ten minutes of intense focus on every movie poster I could see. Classic freeze response.
By the time we got to our seats, my inner critic was in full swing.
What the hell was that?
Was it as bad as it seemed?
Of course it was, you idiot!
Sigh…
What’s wrong with you anyways, why can’t you just be normal?
Am I supposed to hold her hand now?
Like you have the guts…
For years, the fact that Groundhog Day was constantly on TV felt like some cruel cosmic joke—an endless reminder of a night filled with embarrassment and shame. Fortunately, as I did the work of healing my many inner children through IFS, I was able to reconnect with that anxious little boy and, together, we found our way to the lesson trapped in the memory—not a lesson about successful first dates or even about anxiety, but about the loops we all find ourselves in.
For large portions of our lives we effectively relive the same day over and over again—same house, same job, same people, same routines. Most importantly, the same thoughts, same fears, and same inability to feel comfortable just being ourselves. The loop cycles on, repeating our old triggers, woundings, and patterns of thoughts. Day in, day out, we wake up to the same alarm, and begin the repetition. Unfortunately, unlike in the movies, time doesn’t wait for us to break free. There is no coming back from a wasted life as Bill Murray did time after time. One day our clock will tick down from one to zero and the loop will end, taking with it all opportunities to live the perfect day.
Most often, the loop we get stuck inside lives nowhere but in our own head, and sometimes the only answer is noticing it’s this day again.
Where in my life am I still sitting in the dark, absent the courage to take life by the hand?
Where am I still stuck inside myself, when all that’s needed is to reach out and connect?
We don’t enjoy having them, but regrets do serve a purpose. They don’t have to live and die in the past—they can stimulate presence and gratitude in the here and now.
The memories of my loops and patterns remind me to look at my wife, sitting on the couch next to me as I write this, and remember that deep down—just like my first date, just like my friends, just like you, and just like me—the person I’m with is sometimes just an anxious little kid looking for love and acceptance. Most importantly, they remind me that if I can break out of my own mental Groundhog Day—if I can heal the woundings that create the anxiety that causes me to get lost inside myself—there’s a chance I can be the one who offers that love and acceptance to the people in my life and help them break out of theirs.
Because if I—if we—are destined to live the same day over and over again, what better one is there than that?
If there’s one thing to focus on today, let it be evolving past the voice you hear inside your head. - As Far As I Can Tell
What My Wife Has Taught Me About Love (Subscriber Feature)
In one of the most beautiful passage from my favorite book of all time, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius writes:
her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong but even to conceive of doing it.