“At every step, she paused, withdrew to the inner sanctuary, and asked herself, Does this feel right? Her answer came in the form of peace or tension. If she felt tension, she stepped a different way. If she felt peace, she kept going forward.” ― Circles of Separation
Sometimes you feel blah, sometimes anxious, sometimes doom, as a low-level niggling in your body, mind, heart and soul. Sometimes you just want adventure, you want excitement, you want….well, what you do not want is Drama… you want real, honest to goodness peace…not quiet.. not rapture... no, not that. You simply don’t want angst, worry, and all its cousin’s. Sometimes there is fear, but you cannot say what you fear. You are working at it. You desire it. You want to do, think, feel, a calmness, not lethargy, not…again...blah. You are not depressed. You are in need of a quick fix of positive energy.
Maybe you have tried staying busy but busyness does not dispel it any more – it just makes the critical inner voice louder. You tried listing people, places, things you are grateful for but it is a hollow activity. You have tried all the body nurturing but it adds to a sense of foreboding instead of gratitude – it only adds to the sense of isolation. Maybe you tried church bingo, volunteering but it all feels fake as you wear a mask of positivity that you do not feel bone deep. You are kind of “comfortable” but that comfort is not completely saturating your soul with positivity – it is simply one sense receiving some compassion. What do we do when we are not clinically depressed, but, maybe, we are situationally depressed. Yes, that is it. Covid has robbed us of adventure, of gathering without worry, of peace of mind. It is covid fatigue and, no matter how well we thought we were doing, now it is starting to show up.
What is needed, I believe, is you begin to notice and name the feelings. We need to begin to take little risks, to get outside this enforced “comfort zone” we have made for ourselves. Do we need to get uncomfortable? Do we need to simply do what we are hesitating to do? Can we consider the WHY of why we hesitate to get out there and do things we are procrastinating against?
We are in charge of this all. These negative feelings are not us. We become bored and hesitant because we are not challenging ourself to get out there and do “something/anything” that will give us the reward of at least trying to brighten up our own world. What we need is dopamine…yes, that ‘good feeling’ reward that comes when we do something different and beat down our hesitations. The hesitations are our Ego/Inner voice/Lizard Brain trying to fool us into thinking it Is a scary world out there and we best lay low. There is no joy or reward in that. See the possibilities (What is the worst that can happen?) and simply begin taking baby steps out into the world and not letting anything rob us, any more, of our adventurous spirit. We need to bypass the Inner Voice that tells us we cannot, we should not, we would not and listen to your soul that is whimpering in its isolation.
Maybe what we really need is some “euphoria”? Maybe that is what our Inner Sanctuary is truly asking us to seek. Yes, I need euphoria that comes from stepping beyond self-imposed boundaries. I am not going to let this “new” way of living change me. I am all in for finding some joy. My Inner Sanctuary did not mean for us to stagnate. Go For it.
©Carol Desjarlais 5.29.22
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