Two things I’m giving up for healing
These are actually things I have been in the process of giving up for about 5 years, ever since I decided to take a new approach to healing my chronic illness. Even after15 years of exploring nutrition and therapy, embodiment and empowerment (desperately wishing something would help me feel better), my nervous system was still in tatters.
When I learned about nervous system rehabilitation, I started experimenting with which patterns in my life were keeping me in chronic stress and disconnection. I started choosing as often as I could to let go of these patterns.
These were the patterns that my nervous system was using to try and keep me “safe”. They were also the patterns that were keeping me stuck in anxiety, depression, and a world of other symptoms and conditions. Giving up these patterns was a massive challenge, and a long game. But it’s given me a whole new life.
So here’s what I’ve been giving up.
Rushing & overdoing
I used to want to do ALL the things. I would have lists a mile long of all the things I needed to get done that day. I remember the mental stress and physical tension of trying to cram in all the tasks that I could. I would sometimes plan out every hour in a day, trying to maximize efficiency and check off as many tasks as possible. Naturally, this led to rushing, and generally a frenetic pace to my life. I now realize that every single moment I was in that state of pushing myself to do more faster, I was in a state of fight-or-flight. At a deep level it felt like my survival depended on my achieving these goals.
Luckily, my nervous system kept crashing, with debilitating symptoms like chronic fatigue, soft tissue injuries, circulation issues (POTS), and brain fog that made it physically impossible for me to keep up that frantic way of life. After 15+ years of struggling against these symptoms, I finally surrendered my forceful grip. I began to see that no matter how hard I pushed, I simply wasn’t going to get as much done as I wanted to. I (often begrudgingly) would shorten my list to 1-3 items per day. This was really hard for me, for years. Eventually, though, I began to see that getting shit done was not actually the source of my “okayness”. That old perception that I’d survive by doing things was just a coping strategy for all the ways I felt alone and powerless. Eventually, after years of softening my “doing” grip, I begain to truly accept that my authentic state is more being than doing.
Manic creativity and problem-solving
“I have a very active mind.” That’s something I used to believe about myself. It was part of my identity. Because as far back as I could remember, my thinker was always on. Constantly scanning situations, noticing problems, and immediately figuring out ways to solve them. Even things that were out of my realm of influence- like traffic signs or how every car should have two horns or the education system or standard american diet (SAD)- I would fall down one rabbit hole after another, obsessively formulating the most efficient or effective way of structuring any system.
I also had lots of fun ideas of cool things to create- from a community center for women to a healthy drive-through restaurant to a garden that took up my whole backyard. These ideas would take hold of my attention and demand that I feed them. It was fun, to a point. I would create binders full of designs and strategy and marketing ideas. And sometimes I would go further and ask my husband to till up the entire backyard. :-)
I figured that these creative ideas were coming to me for a reason, that they needed me to make them happen. What I didn’t realize is that my over-active mind was in survival mode, since I had very little connections with the other more authentic parts of me (my heart, my body, my true needs and desires). My mind was running wild, taking up all the space that those deeper connections weren’t occupying.
Thankfully, we humans have a highly intelligent system design. When we get so off track, when our connection with our true self is lost, and our one last failsafe (the mind) is left in charge of everything… the system starts to shut itself down. My brain fog, chronic fatigue, and depression made it so that my mind and body were incapable of carrying on in this way. I would get infections that would take me down for days or weeks, effectively interrupting the manic cycle of over-thinking.
It’s been a fair trade
Over the past five years, I have prioritized my connection with my Whole True Self. I have spent minutes or hours each day listening and feeling my body sensations, my emotions, my core frequencies, my desires. Gradually, these authentic parts of me have come online, and they are taking up more and more space in my being, in my life. It was a long process of training my mind (the overthinking and overdoing) to take a back seat, as I cultivated my self-knowledge and self-love in these other areas. Yes, I had to give up the adrenaline and dopamine hits that came with manic creativity and problem-solving. But I’ve gained so much more: deep peace, authentic joy, and vibrant health.