Tag: fear

A Guided Tour of My Anxiety Attack

You work

You dive deep

You build and use your tools

You try to be accountable

Sometimes it’s little. A tightness in the chest. A tremor in the hand. Floating thoughts in tired chaos.

You work

It starts with a flutter deep in the belly. Temper becoming short as you try to hold on to the steady.

You try to be accountable.

Take a day to rest. The quiet makes the deep exhaustion deafening. Dive deep, use your tools.

The flutter grabs hold with claws and the world begins to roil. Coherent thoughts are just out of reach.

Sleep. Try to reset. Hold on to me so I don’t get carried away.

Middle of the night- clammy, claws have worked their way to the chest. Monsters screaming so loud, pulling my knees in, hands over my ears, trying pointlessly to keep out the screaming that’s inside.

Apologies tumbling from my lips, washed away by the downpour of tears. Shaking so hard, my seams threatening to tear.

Sometimes there’s a why. This time there is not a single, but fragments of everything. Real, imagined and all in between. A single why can be rationalized. The shame, I can’t get through the fragments cutting me from inside.

Shame and anger, gains feel lost.

Breathe.

Fucking breathe. Meet the monsters with compassion.

I don’t live here anymore. This once was the home in my head always. But not now.

No anger for the rushing back.

Compassion for the now.

I am human. I have cracks but I am not broken. Lean against the steady.

Breathe, held in place

Arms guiding me back to now. Keep breathing.

There will be fog. Use the tools. Medicine to dull the edge. Know that today you’ll struggle in the thick muck. One foot in front of the other.

Breath in, breath out.

The day will carry on.

You eventually will come to the other side, to begin again

You work

You dive deep

You build and use your tools

You try to be accountable

Pain

Sometimes you can’t tell just by looking.

Maybe when I move, you’ll see a pause, hear my breath. But just a little.

You can’t see the fire I feel, the ripping burn that just settles in. The raw grind and pop. The loudness of it in my head makes it hard to hear the outside world.

When asked, I pause, ‘fine’ I say- it’s exhausting to talk about any other way.

The forced encouragement I whisper to myself to move, stretch, to do what simply needs to get done, to not cry or complain.

It’s always there.

Just by degrees

A good day( usually after treatment), it’s hardly a thought. Not forefront in my thinking, not in my way.

A bad day, sometimes there’s a reason, sometimes there is not. It creeps in like a spiked steamroller. The loudest voice in the room. Some days only one sings it’s angry song. Some days it’s a duet.

At this moment it’s a four part harmony with a smouldering back drop. No steadiness, no focus available, except to will myself to the task at hand.

I do the things I can and hope it’s enough, I reassure the frustrated tired me that relief will come.

It’s all I can do, because some days you can’t tell by looking.

Holocaust Remembered but what have we learned?

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day,

What have we learned from the loss of millions of lives?
People who just wanted to live their every day. Some who may have been destined to do amazing things for the world. Most who just wanted to grow up, grow old, love, learn, enjoy the sun on thier face, a meal with their loved ones, read a book, write a poem, dance.

What have we learned from the loss of millions of lives?
People who were persecuted for their faith, for who they associated with, for who they loved, for their perceived shortcomings.

I ask again, what have we fucking learned?

Here we sit, denying our Indigenous clean water, yet can fund pipelines and war rooms
Here we sit, fighting over who has the right to call this country their home, yet our own fair skinned ancestors crossed the sea from another place, they were not invited nor did they ask
Here we sit, people being murdered because of their skin colour and or orientation, yet we claim to feel oppressed because ( how dare they) we are asked to wear a mask to protect those around us.
Here we sit, oppressed people fighting for education, fighting to have a voice and their stories be told, yet some of us outright deny and dismiss their histories and stories.

I ask again, what have we fucking learned?

WWII Holocaust 6 million mothers, fathers, sons, daughters- wiped out
Countless genocides throughout time in Africa, India, Central Europe
Cultural Genocides in Canada, US, Australia
The list is long and soaked with blood of innocents killed for no reason other than fear of ‘different’

So we give it a day.

What have we learned? What will you do? How can we take history and learn from it.

Blessed Be the souls of those whose lives were taken for no other reason than someone decided they were unworthy.
I will speak up for those voices stolen by greed and ignorance. I will use the lessons here to remember life is sacred, that we are all blood and flesh, that we are all made of the stuff of stars. That we are all one.
❤️

Broken stillness of the night

I woke up at 3. Shaking, not being able to catch my breath. The vivid remnant of nightmares clinging to me like webbing.

I can still see the house I was in, ransacked, ripped apart. Daylight coming through the cracks in the window coverings, dust drifting through the air. Stale smell of inhabitants long gone – desperately trying to hide things like pictures and journals for safe keeping. Things that prove I existed. Knowing with certainty the zombies were coming. Coming to consume me as they had the things and people around me.

Pain singing through the areas of my body that in waking time is my reality. Only here the wounds are visible, bruising, blood, oozing disease dripping from the bandages.

In this dream I am aware I’ve been battling a long time. I feel my child is still alive in this wasteland. I am hiding these things for her. With hope she finds them, a record of the loving normalcy we had lived.

The exhaustion running deeply, the fear that I am loosing the battles, the outer and the inner.

Waking up, I felt nauseous, unable to shake the fear. My shoulder burning, my knee locked in a useless position. My mind racing to what the todays doctor appointment will reveal.

The deep disappointment of still living with the threat of illness, loss of income in a situation I can’t control. At the mercy of ‘the people out there’. The dream very much a mirror of how the constant hammer of daily life is chipping away at me.

So I am awake. Sitting in the dark of my living room. The sounds of my house humming along as it does at the witching our, the furnace and fridge, low buzzing filling the space. The cat crunching kibble, the puppy sighing and shifting in her blissful sleep. Not affected by the webbing of my dream, the anxiety monsters poking at me.

Me knowing in a matter of hours the people in this house will be up, navigating another day.

Still a slight shake of my hands. The paranoia that I may still yet disappear.

Trying to find, deep down inside the fortitude to face today. Another day of worrisome news, the hard to shake disappointment in humanity. Quick mental math, acknowledging the numbers out there vs the risk of leaving the house.

I must shake this off. I have people to care for. A job to do. Clients to treat, a class to lead. A child to parent. A partner to provide balance too. Friends to support and encourage. A life to live.

It was just a dream. Right?

What to do now

Inundated with the ugly of the world. Images of hate, frustration, disgusting lack of compassion, education and decency. It’s easy to forget that this is not all there is.
Yes, we need to bear witness to these atrocities so we can help change the narrative. We need to be aware so we can be the change.
But the constant drone of the shit becomes defeatist. It can leave you numb, spiteful and slowly turn you into a version of the monsters we are so badly trying to beat back.
So as a reminder of why these things need to change, why inclusion, humility, kindness and love of creation need to prevail I am redirecting my focus today.
Today I am focusing on the good, the inspiring, the beautiful.
There are people out there with things to celebrate
Birthdays
Anniversaries
Hard won accomplishments
There are people out there bringing love and gifts of time, connection and grace.
There are beautiful places in nature, in our neighborhoods, in our homes that bring sanctuary and peace.
Today I turn my attention ( posts and personal notes, calls) to these things. To strengthen my resolve to get back into the ‘battle’ with my heart, compassion and values in tact.
Radical love. Radical compassion. Today this is my armour.
✌🏻💜🥳

A Moment of Healing

Trust yourself

Place your hands on the warmth of your skin

Breathe, you are here

There is no sting

Pressure of the phantom hand

Trust yourself

Place your hands with compassion, the places once scarred, mark the beautiful start

Breathe, you are here

Place your hands, the fleshy parts, once blue, now rosy pink. There is no harm

Only honour, only love

Trust yourself

Place your hands, over your heart. Offer compassion to the place ruined not by love but by betrayal

Breathe, you are here

Place your fingers on the softness of your throat, the strong vibration of words now clearly spoken, from a place once stolen

Trust yourself

Place your hands upon the place where your soul resides, accepting both the light and the dark

Breathe, you are here

Place your hands amongst the spaces where your power hums heavy, intimately yours, you owe it no access from others.

Trust. Yourself.

When a Trigger is Pulled – Reminders of Sexual Violence

Today was hard.

I teach massage therapy. Starting last year as part of the program we began to incorporate a guest lecture on sexual violence and trauma. It is needed, informative and very important for the students to have. I have attended this lecture other times and was fine. Today was different.

Have been fairly open in my stories and experiences and their effects on my life. I am a rape and sexual violence survivor. I have mental illness that presents as GAD and CPTSD. At times this manifests as elevated pain in areas previously injured by violence. This becomes more apparent the more stressed and anxious I am. Along with other signs of anxiety this can become a self perpetuating cycle. I lose my ability to speak my needs and boundaries. The pain can worsen, affecting other areas of my body, triggering more anxiety. The cycle goes until it burns out, I shut down or am able to use my tools to effectively work at stopping the cycle.

I have been ill longer in my life than I have been ‘well’. It started in childhood, I am now 47. Over the last 25 years there have been ebbs and flows in my illness, but in some form shades my life.

Over the last decade I have been driven to work harder at finding different therapies and combinations to decrease the effects and severity of the monsters that plague my mind and body. As of the last few months I have been engaging in mindful physical and cognitive work, trying to break the feedback cycle of ⬆️ stress/anxiety ➡️ pain ➡️ feeling helpless ➡️⬆️ stress/anxiety and continual looping.

This has been intense work. It has taken me to dark realizations and places. It has allowed for some of the deeper body’s memories to surface, be acknowledged and hopefully dismantled. I believe this can lead to transformation and as much healing as is possible.

Which brings me to the weirdness of today, and things I didn’t consider. I have participated in this class conversation before, yet today it triggered me.

Being the instructor I sat calmly, helped to facilitate and participated in the conversation. I could hear my voice, clear, firm and very much in command.

However on my head there was screaming, knots in my stomach, tears threatening to fall. I felt shaky, like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, but outward appearances seemed calm. Some of the tightness and pain flaring up in the specific areas I’ve been working on. I did not anticipate this. Although in hindsight I see how I should have guarded and prepared.

I am in a strange place in my head. I feel the ground beneath my feet shifting, the growling and murmurs of the monsters waiting for the shift to show cracks, for me to fall through.

The cold finger of fear trailing down my spine.

I am doing my best to breathe, remind my body it is safe at the moment. There are no hands on me, betraying trust, causing pain. There are phantoms I don’t want to let in.

I must be attentive to my duties. Stay present. Do my job. Be here. The ground tilts. This is a test. A test of the new work, newer tools.

The head detaches.

It’s dizzying.

Maintain my ground. Find my safety.

Be gentle.

There was work done, before class, as part of my plan. I did not anticipate what the day was going to be. It feels threatened to be undone.

The ground beneath me pitches and rolls. The poison rising to be drawn out. The stench in the scar tissue.

Slow the breath

Stay present until I’m in a place I can let the wounds bleed to clean.

Shadow work is hard

Shadow work shows our fragility

Shadow work shows our strength

I honour myself

My work

In time