I've been trying to really 'tune in' to myself. Quiet, no thinking, no aiming to feel a certain way, but trying to connect with myself and pick up the feeling that's already there. What keeps coming up is fear. Deep seated, deeply embedded and, I suspect, hard wired into me from a very, very young age and at the root of everything.
I keep seeing two different versions of myself in my head. An unhappy, lonely, middle aged woman, slowly giving in to her health problems and battles against the system/injustice/fixing the lack in her life. Sitting on a couch, eating biscuits, watching television, 'accepting' it is the way it is. Appreciating the small things that do make her feel happy and content but slowly giving up the hopes and dreams she's had since childhood. Getting consumed by it all and eventually just giving in.
The other version, truthfully, is a bit of an old hippy. Loving life, fit and healthy, wearing crazy clothes, loving time with friends, travelling, growing a garden, reading, learning, laughing. I rarely laugh any more, it's true, I'm rarely in situations that are funny and when I do laugh it's usually because my son says something funny.
Of the two, the happy hippy is the one I want, no question. It's a no brainer, I think most people would pick happy over not. But my habits, choices, decisions often lead me to the sitting lonely on a couch version and that's what I've been trying to figure out. I change the way I do things every few days, always thinking this time, I'll get on top of the unhelpful habits and do more of the good stuff. And if always works for a few days, but then I drift back to the old, unhelpful ways (or at least, they're not helping me become happier or break out of the path I seem to be on just now). And I think it's fear that does it. The unhappy version has grown from fear and i feel like she's as reluctant to let me be myself as my mum always was. It's like I've created another version of my mother to keep in my life and it's as scary breaking free from her as it was getting away from my mum.
So fear is what I'm working on at the minute, but very deep seated fear. What I've noticed about myself recently is that when i wake up in the morning, I'm usually busy straight away. I immediately start doing something, whether it's a helpful thing or not is a different issue. But the last few days I've woken up and just lain there, doing nothing but asking myself how do I feel? And I work through which bits ache and the fact I feel tired and the feeling of overwhelm that's always there. But underneath what comes up is fear. I feel frightened. And then I think I spend a lot of mental energy creating anxiety inducing scenarios in my head, without realising I'm doing it - problems, arguments, need to do lists, what people are thinking/saying/doing about me. I think it takes me away from the underlying feeling of fear and focuses me on something else. It's interesting but i think my sister and I do the same thing in different ways. Her external life is chaos - house, car, money, relationships etc - but she's pretty calm in her own mind. My external life is very orderly day to day but my head and my overall feelings about my life are frantic. Funny, isn't it? I think I don't stick to a change in habits because it works. And that makes taking away the fear managing framework, and that's when it feels like Mrs Stay At Home On The Couch starts to panic and starts shoving biscuits in my mouth again.
Anyway, so my current project now is to try to work on the very deep seated and underlying fear. I know two things that worry me about how much is still buried away is the impact of what happens when you do get in touch with how you really feel and why you feel it - how it affects life on a day to day basis - and that sense of losing control. I can't control how it comes up, how much of it, what it will do to me. But equally I don't want to be lonely on the couch forever and I think this is the bit that needs to be worked on. I'm thinking it has to be through connecting to it, trying to keep stimulation to a minimum, sitting with it when it does come up and figuring it out. More time doing very little and less time doing too much. Might have changed my mind tomorrow lol x
