I am recognising that anxiety drives many of my reactions and when I feel under threat its likely I may get very panicky. It happened at the bank yesterday when I went to withdraw some money, due to the recent suspected ‘scam’ alerts on my account I have had it frozen several times and when the teller asked for my licence and went off to check with his superiors I started to get very anxious. My heart was racing, it was hard to breathe, I had negative thoughts going round and round and worst I started to express the distress which in the past has not helped to reassure them. The guy went off for quite and while and I do get triggered by waiting but I soothed myself closed my eyes and practiced my breathing. I also said calming sentences to myself. Everything is going to be okay. Things will work out. Just stay calm, it is going to be fine.
I recognise more and more now how I drive a lot of my anxiety by what I tell myself and by how I react. I am a bit of a over analyser too. I like to get to the bottom of things and I have been told I am a deep and serious thinker. I do believe this has great aspects to it but at times when I turn things over and over and over too much it does get a bit much.
That said have you ever been told by someone that you need to ‘let something go’. As someone pointed to me this week its hard when what you felt was not acknowledged or you were told you were wrong or bad for it or for reacting as you did and often this comes out of the other party misunderstanding the true feelings you were going through as well as your complex or past history. We can all misunderstand one another from time to time and impute wrong motives and suffer from wrong perception. Thich Knat Hahn provides a sweet little chapter in his book on love that asks us to question our own views and perceptions of others. We all wear different lenses through which we view the world and past feelings and associations do colour them.
I had a great night’s sleep last night but I did have an intense nightmare. I was warned in the dream that a dark energy would come in and possess me. It happened in the dream. I don’t know if anyone else has this dream of a dark malevolent force in a dream but it feels like you are awake and the force is overpowering and strong. I had that last night but I got through the dream though I did sense my body reacting strongly while semi conscious. I know Scott was texting me about 1.15 am and I had the phone off but I woke at 1.30 and went to the loo. I didn’t see the text until after 7 am when I woke up and turned on the phone but as my twin I often pick his energy up bodily prior to contact. The fear/terror dream made sense when I am still working through all the stress with the bank and ‘scammer’ alerts and opening my heart to trust another human being again.
I also woke thinking so much about my Dad today. It being Saturday I thought of my accident and of the distress Dad must have felt as they wheeled me screaming along the corridor because of all the lacerations to my body and face following my MVA in 1979. Mum rode in the ambulance with me but Dad went to the hospital separately. It would have been so distressing for them both and years earlier we had an accident on the Clyde mountain where we spun out on the road and nearly went over the edge. I remember the next day climbing into Dad’s bed while he held me, that never happened.. it was one of the closest moments with my Dad who was never physically demonstrative. I think I was only about 10 at the time. I felt Dad’s spirit around today and I was talking to him of some things.
I am grateful to be alive. I came very close to death then. I have seen so much trauma and death to follow, suicide attempts by family members, struggled to overcome my own addiction, gone through the heartbreak of divorce, witnessed and tried to be there to support others in my family through multiple physical and emotional illnesses, suffering, drugging, shock treatment of my sister and her struggle to be herself coming out of a difficult marriage. I have survived breast cancer and radiotherapy in later years. I think of my own struggles with past partners and of the trauma my ex partner’s trauma and family history of alcoholism all carried on and of our own struggles to love well which ultimately failed.
Luckily I have love in my life. I feel it most from Scott, from blogging friends and from my therapist Kat and my nephew Gerrard. I feel it from my higher power and Jasper, I feel it in the sun that greets me on a new day telling me there is always a possibility to experience something positive and new. I count my blessings today. I am grateful too for the recognition that I can face and hold my own pain and that so so many others go through pain and loss too, mine is not ‘special’ or unique in anyway. Pain and loss are just part of life, not aberrations.
When I am brave enough to be vulnerable, when I reach out, when I share, when I unmask myself that is when healing flows in for me, there will be times of conflict when my heart breaks for all of the all too human limitations which hold me back from being and expressing love, fear is a destroyer of love so often, but it is not always unjustified. Holding my own hand through the anxiety and fear, finding ways to comfort, de-escalate and self calm are such essential tools on this path of healing and recovering. I have to find the way to do it for myself for ultimately I am responsible for my own self care.
Emerging From The Dark Night 