Unlock the secrets of self-preservation...
On trying not to lose ourselves.
I’m experiencing a lot of anxiety right now, and I’m not sleeping that well. I’ve talked to my doctor - there’s no real medical reason for any of it. It’s likely emotional, which I can accept. I’m not that happy about it, but I can accept it.
I’m going back to the basics.
I started therapy again, and I’m trying to spend time each morning in my journal exploring feelings and reading from the tried-and-true The Language of Letting Go, by Melody Beattie.
Today’s entry is on sadness and begins with this sentence:
Ultimately, to grieve our losses means to surrender to our feelings.
Then, I begin my journal writing with a quick,
Right now I feel…
And I let it flow.
Frustrated with my body for all this not sleeping and anxiety.
Annoyed with my husband, because he took a very long and very loud personal/work call in our small NYC apartment living space last night, essentially holding me hostage from doing anything else in that space until finally I just gave up and went to bed.
Scared and nervous about some potential changes on the horizon and how it will all work out. Haven’t things changed enough already?? I can feel the shifting sands.
These feelings are tricky for me, not because I don’t want to feel them, necessarily. But because of how I feel about myself for feeling them.
I want to be a person who is happy and accepting of her body in whatever state it happens to be in.
I want to be the wife who is more understanding than annoyed. The woman who can simply use her voice to say, “Hey, can you take that to the office? I want to watch the 114th episode of Gilmore Girls.”
I want to be the woman who can handle anything and has it all under control. The person who doesn’t get stressed out by (potential) major life changes.
But I am not that woman. At least not at this moment.
I am pushing these indicators away because that is not who I think I am, or who I want to be.
As I stare at the list, I notice some are big things, and some are very small things. Some can be easily rectified, and some cannot.
I can also see one thing is true:
Denying my true feelings means ultimately that I am denying my very existence.
Which essentially cuts me off from myself.
When you’re cut off from yourself, you become less embodied—and when you become less embodied, it’s more difficult to know and understand what you want and need.
When you don’t know what you want and need, you allow other things or people to inform you about your very essence. Then, before you know it, you’re so far away from yourself that maybe you feel anxious all the time, or maybe you can’t sleep.
Growing up, I learned my feelings weren’t important. By extension, that meant I wasn’t important. It was a lesson taught with such certainty that I picked it up quickly, and I learned it well - the perfect student.
I’ve spent the better part of two decades unlearning this. Yet still, here it is. When I get busy, when my routine changes, when other things get in the way of self-care, it comes back.
I’m not sure I will ever be free from this.
I understand what it is to know myself and be fully embodied, and I know it so well that I can’t unknow it. Stepping out of that knowing creates a visceral response in my body.
The further away from myself I get, the more anxious I become, and of course, I do. I have no anchor. I am out there, floating in some primal abyss, strapped in only by a tether. It’s a miracle I don’t drift away.
How many of us are floating around this way? Completely disconnected from ourselves. Are the feelings too difficult? Or, like me, do they indicate you’re somewhere you’d rather not be?
Either way, the result is the same—a loss of you.
I’ll leave you with Mellody’s prayer at the end of today’s entry…
God, help me fully embrace and finish my endings, so I may be ready for my new beginnings.
Yes, that and help me surrender to my feelings.
I’m returning to basics and becoming more aware and accepting of what’s happening inside.
Anyone want to join me?