Last weekend I cried because my partner cooked dinner.
He usually cooks dinner. I usually don’t cry about it.
But this time I had decided I was going to cook dinner. I picked out a recipe I wanted to try, shopped for ingredients and planned my Saturday according to this activity. I spent most of my day doing an assignment for school. It was the first time I was doing any academic writing or reading in a while so that muscle has atrophied quite a bit. So it was taking me much longer than it used to during my undergraduate degree.
I asked my partner to do the dishes and clear the kitchen so I could get straight to work when I reached a natural stopping point in my assignment. And when I did, I made my way to the kitchen.
My partner had started to cook using my ingredients but not according to my recipe. And I got real mad. I didn’t shout or anything, I usually don’t, but I showed my frustration in other ways. He offered to let me take over but I couldn’t undo his cooking to do my cooking. And I couldn’t think my way through integrating it somehow. I simply panicked.
Over dinner.
One stupid dinner.
I went to the bedroom and spiraled.
I cried.
I talked to a friend who told me (in different words) that I was acting crazy.
Even in that state I realized I wasn’t crying over dinner. I wasn’t even crying because of the assignment. That change in my plans just triggered a domino effect within my nervous system which collapsed under the pressure I have been feeling lately.
You see, I’m trying out my new energy. The energy I found when I started eating better and exercising and using all of the tools I have accumulated over the years to keep my mental health in check.
I started taking on a bit more work to test my limit. And I started taking one class at the local university. But I forgot to take into account a huge stressor that hadn’t been there during the summer, while I was making all these changes, but got added in the fall. I will tell you about it eventually, but not today.
I think I found my limit that day.
I had another wake up call yesterday, two days after the Big Spiral. My co-worker invited me to a Yoga Nidra class last night. I got there and laid down with a pillow under my knees and a little rice bag thing over my eyes and a blanket covering me. And the more the facilitator told us to relax and focus on our breath, the faster my heart would beat.
All this to say; I need to step back a little bit.
Not on my health journey or my work or school. Just step back out of my reactive state and look at it from a different perspective.
I was reading about what happens in your body when your stress response gets activated, including something called a hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal Axis. I’m not a biologist (or any kind of -ist, really), but if you’re interested you should read about what happens when your stress systems are activated for too long. Spoiler Alert, my teacher mentioned some scary things.
It’s funny how what you’re watching or studying or reading often applies to your life.
Anyways.
Logically, I know that I am safe. I am not in any immediate danger. I am okay.
So why is my system so activated?
Maybe my body has learned to recognize extra energy as a precursor to overdoing it. I have a long history of feeling the tiniest bit of energy and using it to swallow the world.
But I didn’t this time so the nervous energy had nowhere to go.
I’m still figuring out this new reality of not living in a constant state of reactions but rather being aware of my feelings and giving them safe haven. I am used to just appointing them the supreme overlords of my entire being and letting them guide me.
But feelings are just information.
We decide what we do with that information.
I make it sound like it’s easy. It’s not. I go from having all of the emotions all of the time to being a gray blank slate of nothingness. Back and forth in a twisted limbo. I’m hoping that has changed at least a little bit. The emotions will always be something I struggle with, which is okay. But I think I can process them better and with more intention than I used to.
A part of the reason for this whole project is to not be a plastic bag in a hurricane.
I want to live intentionally.
I want to let my body and emotions give me the information I need, while remembering that I ultimately decide what to do with it.
– Luc
Want to follow along on this little journey? Subscribe to be up to date on any and all posts