I’d have never made it as a pioneer. I can barely bear to go shopping at Walmart for food, never mind go out into the frozen forest in search of something to hunt. And, I am a busy person who is driven to keep busy but I could not have done all it takes to survive one winter’s day that my ancestors, the Viking women had to endure and get done. I used to be a multi-tasker. Now. I can hardly stay focused on one task any more, so I end up making stations of ‘busyness” around the house and I move from one thing to another throughout the day… and night.
I have met a woman who was me twenty years ago, thirty years ago, when it would take another mighty busy woman to task to try to keep up with me. In fact, I volunteered to help her with several of her busy-making activities. She asked me why I had helped her and I told her, “Because you are me a few decades ago and I could have used an assistant.” I know how driven she is. I remember. My body is paying for it all now. I have had to learn to disconnect from busyness as best I can and I, now, include a daily rest time in the mix of my busyness. And I seldom sleep longer than two-hour stints. I get up in the night and roam around, trying to find something to do. I am well aware that, at some point, I will reach exhaustion and exhaustion will slam me down and tell me, “I told you to slow down!” I have. I am forced to lie down, to rest, and look at the dark side of the moon to deal with what I am running from. I, in my busyness, am disconnected from my emotions and I am hardly aware of myself, emotionally. I have always been so. The more stress, the harder I worked and my poor body was doing double time for it.
Work numbs the other three quadrants of my life. I stay intellectually immersed through creativity…you will find me doing art, housework, anything to keep from thinking. I stay emotionally distant. I do not spend in depth time dealing with spirituality unless it is through the work of art, or creating. I keep a working schedule while awake and I will stay awake for an hour or two between fitful sleeps I am driven to. I am living a habituation life. I can no longer work as hard but I still stay busy which, in my warped sense of self, is not being “lazy” and, somewhere in there, I recognize the Puritan ideology that hard work keeps the devil away. Of all things, why would it lead back to some religious ideology in me? I need to find time to work some cognitive restructuring and explore all the reasons I allow work to override intellectual, emotional and spiritual aspects of Self. My life is not in balance and my sleep patterns show it as well. It is as if I live in short episodes. Rest has become just another segment of my day.
Things need to change because I am not getting the healing that the body needs and is able to access best when one sleeps. I am, it seems, full of nervous energy that causes me not to rest at night. In order to restructure my thought processes and my subconscious worrying, I have to tae the time to consider the WHYS.
What is it that concerns me, at some deep level? Am I worried something will happen and I will miss it? What catastrophe could happen if I rested rather than kept awake and working during the hours of night I am awake and doing so?
I am an aging workaholic. I do not know what to do with quiet times. As with all things, I need to begin to set some boundaries or myself. If I get up for other than to go to the bathroom at 3 am, I need to go back to bed and try to go back to sleep. I have no doubt that I would because I sense I am in a perpetual state of exhaustion. I am unable to build my energy through sleep and rest. I have to find ways to retrain myself.
It may sound simple to those who are not inflicted with inability to rest. I justify that I get lots done as if that makes me “good”. Therein lies to crux of it… being busy makes me good. I learned that in my youth (“Cleanliness is next to godliness”, or some such, was taught to us, modeled for us, expected that we would live busy lives because of). Do I believe that I am going to reach some golden ticket to heaven if I work hard? Does exhaustion really make me worthy? This new year I have to turn this round. Eating this elephant one small bite at a time, means that I will slowly transfer the negative thoughts about rest and sleep into healthier thoughts that rest gives me more energy and I can be more productive. I am reasoning with my psyche. Being busy is not an art, it is a type of self-punishment for something I am not conscious of.
Do you relate to any of this? How are you going to turn negative thoughts about rest into positive ones?
©Carol Desjarlais 12.29.23
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