Hard Days & Monsters, & How You Will Survive Both.
“Some days I want to give up. Some days, it’s just so hard,” I said.
“I know,” my complement retorted.
I’ve accomplished many of my dreams, and actual goals I have set. Yet, sometimes I am washed in the feeling to just throw in the towel. Sometimes, I just want to put my Type A nature in a box in the closet on the top shelf. Stop striving, and just exist in the tedium of everyday life. Sometimes, I am stifled in self-doubt.
The funny thing is I know I am good at what I do. I am confident, I make mistakes occasionally (like anyone), I know what I know. What I don’t know I strive to learn. I am passionate, compassionate, and have been relatively successful. I think of everyday being a school day, and I am a vessel of learning.
Where is the conflict? It resides in my autonomic nervous system.
I know these heavy cement-like feelings will pass. I just have to sit with them, feel them bind me. Get to the point of feeling like I am suffocating, and let it pass. I acknowledge, that my nervous system is sending the message to freeze. To play dead until the monster or dinosaur passes.
I freeze for a few moments. I play dead. I let the feeling settle, or sometimes I move through the day with intensity. Knowing deeply that it will pass — I’ve been here before. I survived, I’ve thrived, and I have existed. I know how to return to homeostasis, I have tools.
The feelings passing through my parasympathetic nervous system bring me back.
It’s quite a ride — not the sort you want to line up for again and again. However, just like an uncomfortable plane ride, I know I could do it again if I had to.
So, here is to you, to those who have hard days like me sometimes or maybe more times than less. To those who have anxiety bubble up like lava that a volcano sends as a warning sign prior to a blast. Know that you are not alone, that though it isn’t normal to feel this way, it is common. It will pass.
You will thrive once more, just take a moment to honor the sensation.
It will release it faster, as well as release the power that it has over you. Let the volcano steam and bubble; it’s just a test of your autonomic nervous system. You will pass.
*****
Thea Pueschel, C.Ht., is a Hypnotherapist, Yoga Teacher, Artist and is her ‘father’s son’, the third of four, and equally as energetic and creative as her namesake. Raised with the idea that life is art, and anything worth doing is done with passion and focus, she explores the world with the wide-eyed wonder of childhood adopting and engaging in new skills, modalities and forms of expression. She is the creator and facilitator of HypnoArt and Pranyama & Paint Workshops. She is excited to be taking The Magic of Metaphor: Guided Imagery and Yoga Nidra Immersion on the road to Texas and Missouri this year. You can follow her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or contact her via her website.