On Why I Think I’m Not Falling Apart.
It is finally Election Day. An event that has felt, for many of us, like the rotten cherry on top of the melting, toxic sundae that has been 2020.
Throughout quarantine, a deadly, life-changing virus, social unrest and riots, and political infighting and nastiness of a scale we’ve rarely seen before, I’ve witnessed people’s stress levels go sky-high.
My profession – and my vocation – is to help people with stress like this, as well as the pain, tension, trauma, and dissociation experienced in their bodies from a myriad of causes – past, present, and future.
Together, we find opportunities to mend their broken or frayed bodymind connections, connect cognition with sensation, and seek out pathways toward more ease and expansion in their bodies and their lives.
I’ve spent months now doing my best to shepherd my clients through events, even when I had to do it via laptop screen; all while navigating my own and my family’s fears and concerns.
But I have definitely noticed as the months have passed (and the crazy has mounted), a distinctly lower level of stress in myself than I might have expected. In fact, I feel pretty level in my mood, in general.
I’m not completely emotionless, or Zen-like, and I don’t think it’s just stoicism. I have fears and anxiety for myself and my family, I feel angry at those in power and the virus, and somewhat powerless myself, and occasionally I feel pretty hopeless.
But underneath that, there seems to be a level of calm – an equilibrium - that, when explored, points to a few things.
I think a lot of it is an awareness of how little control I have over anything, which is hard for me since I am a girl who likes her control, due to a difficult family of origin.
But when I was 21, I lost control (or at least the illusion of it) over the most important thing in life – my body. My immune system turned against me, and the inflammation of Rheumatoid Arthritis hit me hard.
For 28 years, I’ve given up large chunks of my life to illness, fatigue, pain, joint damage, comorbidities, and relapses. I don’t have a “normal” life.
And I always understand that, even though I try to take good care of myself, my body is pretty much going to do what it is going to do.
Anybody with a chronic illness has already learned to live with the kind of physical unpredictability and uncertainty that everyone is experiencing from the virus.
We live with the knowledge that we’re just as likely to wake up with energy and a desire to go running, as we are to feel crushing fatigue and full-body pain!
I also feel a strong aversion to giving up even a minute more of energy - and life – than I have already had to give up, to something I can’t control; whether it’s Covid19, the bizarre behaviors of Donald Trump, hypocritical politicians and an uncertain election, bad air, riots around social injustice, or even bitterness about all the rain we’re getting.
I’d rather give my energy and time to the things I love, that give me energy back.
But even more important, I think, is the help that SPRe has given me. Getting to know more about my body and my feelings and how they deal during tough times has helped transform what feels like random, uncomfortable and uncontrollable sensations and bad things that happen to me. This feels calming and regulating, and kind of helps guide me into an equilibrium. So that’s something I’ve got going for me!
I don’t know what the future holds, and that’s scary. I’m sure I’ll lose my equilibrium, maybe over and over, and have to integrate new feelings and events. But knowing that I can attain it again, that it belongs to me, is what’s important.
What’s even more exciting is that anyone can attain their own middle ground; through any number of amazing somatic-based, trauma-informed modalities!
So that you can thrive, too - despite present disappointment, fear, and uncertainty - on into the future.