I’ve been healing, planning, and working.
About two months ago, I had an incredible healing breakthrough. It was enough of one that I realized I was done with therapy. I’d been honest, brave, and I’d done the work.
That breakthrough came with incredible moments of synchronicity. In stories, when those coincidences come, audiences love them. Like, in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the last episode of season 4, Midge has gotten chewed out by her friend Lenny Bruce for turning down a gig with Tony Bennet. What he says sinks in with her. She walks into a snowstorm, and the wind blows away her umbrella and hat. She turns a corner, then sees the words “Go Forward” in the snow. The snow lets up for a moment, and it turns out she’s looking at a billboard for “The Gordon Ford Show.”
In fiction, those moments of synchronicity are sign posts for the audience, coincidences with meaning that help us see the symbolism in that person’s life.
In real life, if you take those signs too seriously you can lose your mind, but if you dismiss all of them, you miss your calling.
But the thing is, those signs can be scary. The pile of beautiful, meaningful coincidences that hit me on a day in November, they scared me deeply. I think a lot more deeply than I realized. I had a moment of healing, my mind gave me the gift of the physical sensation of it, and I was grateful. But also scared.
I get scared when I change. I have to work at change, because my body fights against it. My nervous system remembers every scary moment in my life, and works overtime to protect me – and it includes change in that list of threats.
I always work through it. I get better at getting up quicker. But the change in November and December was so big, it scared me deeply.
I slowly switched over from healing, planning and working to hiding and planning. And using planning as an excuse to hide. I’m doing things. I’m staying busy. But busy isn’t the same thing as productive.
Five years ago, it would’ve taken me six to twelve months to notice what I was doing. Now, it took me about three weeks. There’s other things I catch right away. I think eventually I’m gonna catch on to all of it right away. I’ve spent six years reparenting myself, learning my feelings, recovering memories and processing tough times. I grieved for so many people gone. Acceptance. A lot of good work. With the last six months being the last of it. I’m whole, and healed.
And I’m scared. I feel great to be integrated and whole, and it’s so different I’m scared. So, I’ve slowed down, and I’ve been hiding.
I don’t need to hide anymore.
I just had a breakthrough. It feels incredible.
New things scare my nervous system. My conscious mind can override that fear. But only if I’m aware of it.
That feeling of acceptance and integration scared the crap out of me. I think literally a little, too, I got some unexpected bouts of stomach flu that contributed to that scared feeling. But feeling like this, feeling good, accepting myself, feeling calm, it’s so new it activated something in my amygdala. Instead of flight, or fright, I froze.
I went from writing a 2 thousand+ words a day to less than 1000 on average. I went from 4-8 hours of writing a day to 1-2 hours. Instead of doing chores right away, I procrastinated. I still did them, but I took longer. Instead of getting up right away, I laid in bed. It’s been like this for about three weeks. Instead of healing, planning and working, it turned into hiding, planning as hiding, and a slow down in my work.
A few years ago, it would’ve taken me six to twelve months to notice. And I would’ve gotten angry with myself, and maybe even talked to myself harshly. But I learned how to reparent myself. I’m not afraid to notice these things. I’ve learned how to be calm, and notice, and be loving, and grateful.
A few months ago, I would’ve figured this out in therapy. But the biggest change in therapy came this year, when I was the one figuring things out, in and out of therapy. My therapist noticed all of this before me.
It’s been a month since I stopped therapy. And I feel like my amygdala gave me a gift. The fear froze me, and gave me something to notice. I figured out what’s happening on my own. And now that I can see it, I can acknowledge it, accept it, and use the tools I learned to help me go past it.
And even though I was frozen, I still pushed through. I got photos taken. I wrote some business plans. I’ve been doing volunteer work. A lot of things. While I was frozen, I managed to move slowly. Now I get the gift of unfreezing myself, with intention.
It’s like I gave myself a test. And tonight, I got the answers. Tomorrow, when I wake up, I get to finish the test.
I’m grateful that I learned healing is possible. That I got to heal. And that my returned awareness is present, integrated into my mindful nature, and part of my fully accepted self.
Tonight, I’m going to bed on time.
Tomorrow is the next day one.
And I’m grateful.