Over-explaining yourself is often a sign that you don’t yet believe you have the right to your own limits. — Unknown
I’ve been in so many situations where I’ve felt that I had to explain myself, whether I felt compelled to or whether I was made to, I’ve found myself defending my decisions. It has been an automatic response and I always thought it was because, growing up, I was being taught accountability. Because when asked, I (was made to believe) had to be able to explain myself, I had to be able to articulate my answers to why questions. I’ve always joked that I had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and I know inside me there’s this little girl still deathly afraid of disappointing people.
As I’ve been going through this healing journey, I’m starting to learn that apart from the fight or flight response that humans have, trauma survivors have a freeze or fawn response. The trauma is something else to unpack entirely and I’m not laying blame on anyone. I know I need to deal with it eventually. But I don’t think that day is today. I do understand and recognise that I fawn more than I freeze. I think I understood early on in my life that I needed to be hyper-compliant and that I had to learn to how to quickly soothe and please other people to diffuse potentially volatile situations, avoid conflicts and be safe. Part of this was me explaining my decisions, justifying my actions and answering the why questions to appeal to reason. I somehow believed that it was my responsibility to do that.
Sometimes you don’t necessarily owe anyone else an explanation because it doesn’t matter if you have a perfectly good reason for your decisions. And, sometimes you don’t have to say anything more than no. No is sometimes the only thing you have to say because it’s a complete sentence. You don’t have to explain why your boundary is where it is. They won’t necessarily explain themselves to you. So let them set that boundary, and you can also act accordingly.
Sometimes you have to decide to just stop. Stop being available. Stop being considerate. Stop initiating. Stop chasing. Remember not everyone is for you and you are not for everyone. If they want to leave, let them.
We are all beautiful disasters. We are all unique and complex. Perfectly imperfect, extraordinarily ordinary but all magically marvellous. We need to embrace the totality of who we are: the spaghetti bowl of tangled emotions, the missteps that need redirections, the weaknesses, our strengths, our passions and our hearts.
We need to forgive ourselves for being human and for not knowing things right away, for not knowing how to cope with new situations. We are here to learn, to develop, to grow and to evolve. We need to firmly, but gently, remind ourselves of this everyday.
We need to remember that every single day, we are enough, we have enough, and what we do need, we will acquire when the time is right. The universe evens everything out and will conspire in our favour.
Close your eyes and carry only what is light enough to take into tomorrow. — Unknown
You can try, but you can’t really prepare for the future. You can try to plan so you’re ahead of the game, to anticipate and be five steps ahead. You can establish routines, be habitual, so your day is scheduled and more predictable. You can try, but you need to accept that, ultimately, the future will always be unknown and you can’t prepare for an unexperienced event. The only thing you can do is to learn to be adaptable, agile and resilient, so that when the unexpected happens, you’re able to recover from being blindsided a little quicker, and you find yourself able to pick up the pieces to gather yourself to move forward.
As with capsule wardrobes and minimalist packing, we need to learn to travel light, emotionally. We need to learn to carry only what will equip us to deal with the future and to learn to let go of the burdens of the past. As always, easier said than done. But as with everything, practice makes perfect, learning allows us to gain skills and slowing down and taking a breath allows us to actually think faster on our feet.
We’re always told we should be mentally resilient, but we’re not usually reminded to take care of our baseline physical health too. We need to take care of our bodies so that we can mentally and physically cope with the stress that anxiety puts us under.
It’s not about avoiding the anxiety or the difficulty, it’s about learning to sit with it, think through it and slow down the racing thoughts.
Is what you’re worried about something that is happening now, is it a real event in the future? Will it happen to you? Can you find a solution for it that will prevent it from happening?
If you answered no, then put the worry away (Yes, I understand; easier said than done if you’re a worrier!). It is beyond your control, and you can only make a difference if you can effect change. If you answered yes, make sure you can actually find a solution, then do something, instead of letting the anxiety create inertia in you. Do something, if you can.
It does help to feel the feels, to sit in the vulnerability (I love you, Brene Brown!♥️), but you need to make sure that the wallowing does not make you all pruney. The goal is to be familiar with the anxiety and the vulnerability, so you can slow the thoughts, find a solution if you can, or understand that you have no control over events, to shake it off so that you have energy reserves to deal with the fallout instead.
I’ve just finished binge watching Off Campus. Yes, yes, I will be a forever card carrying girly girl and I do love my rom coms. I know some of the romcoms don’t necessarily reflect real-life relationship scenarios and some people will say that most of the relationships in movies or TV series are dysfunctional. But sometimes romantic comedies are just that — a showcase of romance and a little something-something to make you giggle. You can’t always take life too seriously!
Okay SPOILER ALERT. What I did love about Off Campus was the cerebral bit (that’s what I’m calling it in my head. Deal with it!). There was a discussion of Kierkegaard’s two contrasting truths, how the objective and subjective truths can coexist at the same time. I loved how the concept was explained. It was like an on-screen CliffsNotes on philosophy. I can’t believe Netflix had a real teaching moment!
A swan can look serene on the surface but furiously paddling below.
You can fall apart and still be full of wonder. Both are true at once. — Unknown
We can hold space for two truths all at the same time. Humans are a wonderful paradox and have this amazing capacity for contradiction: we can be competitive but kind, we can act in complete defiance of our beliefs and yet live lives that embody our values, we can be completely heartbroken and yet laugh out loud while watching a rom-com movie, you can love someone and yet know that you can’t be in that space anymore. We don’t have to live in single-box identities.
There are no hard and fast rules when you are in the recovery road. You don’t have to be serious and all about the learning. You can laugh and find joy when it presents itself. Learning to deal with the trauma and also notice the glimmers can be simultaneous when you are healing.
Change happens when the desire to grow becomes greater than the desire to stay comfortable. — Tony Robbins
What is comfortable is predictable and familiar. It is human nature to seek the familiar because it is safe and helps conserve energy. As humans, we are hardwired to take the path of least resistance because it is assured survival. Our brains, roughly take up just 2% of our body weight but consume about 20% of our energy. Our brains naturally seek what is comfortable to save energy consumption because too much expending of energy will lead to burnout.
The paradox is for us to gain more energy, we have to expend energy. We have to push and stretch our boundaries. Staying in our safety zones, will, in the long run, keep us stuck in less-than-ideal circumstances. It can keep us comfortable in situations that are no longer good for us. Because it is familiar, sometimes we allow ourselves to stay in painful places because we know how to manoeuvre in these spaces. We avoid the unfamiliar peace and stay in the familiar hell because we already know how to survive it. I know this because I’m living it.
The trick is, apparently, small, consistent changes. I say apparently because I am a work in progress. I am anxious and uncertain, but I know something has to change. I know that in order to recover, in order to heal, I need for there to be real change. I know I am misreading the anxiety I’m feeling. I’m anxious because there has been so much upheaval in my life. But I need to reframe this in my mind. The upheaval is good. It is necessary for me to change. I just need to break this down into small, manageable chunks.
I’m sitting in the discomfort. I know it signals change. I need to stay the course. I will get there. I need to stop putting things off (because I’m terrified of the change it’ll demand from me). But I do know I need to figure out how to move forward…and soon
Your inner circle provides the energy you unconsciously digest. You need to be selective about who you let in because they must see you — your quirks, your weaknesses, your strengths; they mustn’t judge you — even when they don’t understand, notice whether their knee-jerk reaction is to offer advice to fix you (even if they don’t have the capacity or experience); they must hold space for you — that they are with you in the easy and difficult moments, that they know that sometimes you just need them to hold space for you (even when you are down); they must have the patience and presence to choose the time and utterance to tell you the uncomfortable truths that you need to hear.
You are your environment. Your environment provides the air you breathe, the nutrition you absorb, the information you digest. Remember, crap in, crap out.
Every choice you make has a consequence. Choose wisely and choose often. — Unknown
We’re encouraged to choose, to choose wisely, to choose what’s best, what feels right, what feels good. Eventually, following all the choosing, we’ll need to face the consequences of our actions. No one actually prepares you for how soul-destroying and heart-wrenching it can be when it all goes wrong, and you look at how your choices have impacted your life, how you’re going to pick up the pieces, if the choices you made don’t necessarily lead to the life you thought it would lead to.
What do you do? Where do you go from here? How do you manage? Then the worrying wheel starts turning. Then the anxiety starts climbing. Then the panic starts choking you. Your brain starts screaming: What the hell have you done?!?
The first thing you do is you stand still. The need to move will probably feel inescapable. But you need to keep still. You need to breathe. You take a breath to settle and stop the spiralling and spinning.
Then you need to forgive yourself for the decisions you made. They were choices you made with the capacity and knowledge available to you at the time. You are where you are now, and it is what it is. Settle and learn. See the lessons.
After that, you accept responsibility for your actions, but also accept that you did what you could with the emotional capacity, wisdom, and life experience you had at the time. You were learning, processing, synthesising and executing in real-time. Stay still long enough to learn the lessons. Settle so that the wisdom and evolution bakes in and takes hold.
Then map out where you go from here, armed with lessons learned, kindness for yourself. You didn’t know then what you know now. And that’s okay. Now you can choose better.
Some days carry grief quietly. Tonight, let it speak, then let it rest. — Unknown
I’ve put off dealing with a lot of things – the inevitable grief that comes from losing both parents whom I love very dearly in a span of 4 years, the end of relationships that I thought would stand the test of time and personal growth, accepting burnout, and the need to step back from toxic environments. But my body and my mind had other plans. They both demanded that I stop and step back.
The Universe also conspired to give me the time to actually start dealing with everything. Things fell into place, and I had the time and space. Also, it was deal with things or basically unravel. I was deathly afraid of unravelling in public, and there were times when it was touch and go. I had to deal with what was going on in my head, my heart, my body, and my soul, or else I really would lose it in a way that I would find it hard to recover from.
One of the things I had to sit down and deal with was the unexpressed grief I’d been carrying with me for so long. It was eating away at me. I needed to sit down, open that box, and look inside.
Grief is never linear, and the process is not straightforward. There are peaks and troughs in the rhythms of grief. There are days when it hums quietly, almost unnoticeable in the background. There are days when it feels like it’s a loud, thundering wildebeest stampede, coming to trample you. Everyone’s experience of grief is different because we move through life differently. We weave through the stages of grief according to our own capacity and capability. And however we do that is okay. It is our individual journey.
Sometimes it will feel like you’re moving back and forth — rebuilding might mean you’re moving in reverse, like you’re facing an identity crisis before you reach a point of understanding. Sometimes you need a wave to crash over you and completely destabilise you so that you can reach a point where you’re stabilised and grounded, because you have a deeper understanding of yourself and what you’re going through.
It’s okay to wail and rail and to let out your grief. That’s part of it. Let it out. Let it shout. Express it. Then let yourself rest and recover.
Yellywelly 