I fell into the hole. And I just kept falling. The trap door opened, I took a step back then inched forward and peered in. How comfortable the darkness looked. I took another step back but this time only to run and jump headfirst into the hole. How comforting, all of my old fears. Like old friends. All ready there. Waiting for me to come back to them.
That is not how it felt. it did not feel like greeting old friends. It felt like being sucked back in time where all I could hear were arguments in my head. One side saying no this is too scary, the other side saying just do it stop being such a wimp. No middle ground, no clarity, no air, no space. Just two opposing forces. Where had I gone?
I couldn’t find myself. There were so many opinions, so many voices, everything my mind had in its arsenal to repress all emotion and confuse me, stop me from hearing myself. And it was a powerful powerful tirade of noise. Why am I not good enough, what am I doing here, why do I just want to lie in bed all day, why am I getting anxiety leaving the house, why do I have no appetite, why am I so tired, why can’t I sleep, why did talking about it with friends not help, why did meditation not help…why can’t I just figure out what the hell is going on and get myself out of it??
And herein lies the problem. It’s like a chinese finger bind, the harder you pull the tighter it gets. I look back and can see clearly where I was triggered. I knew the ‘why’, I knew what stories I was playing out but understanding and acknowledging didn’t seem to help. Then it struck me. After nearly 3 weeks of all these thoughts getting louder and louder I realised that the harder I was trying to stop them, the louder and stronger they were getting.
But how do we take back charge in these situations? I’m not going to say just let it go. Because in this scenario it was coming on so thick and fast I barely had space to breathe let alone make room to let it go. So I gave my mind permission to be triggered. It was uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable. But resisting the feelings you have when you are triggered is giving the triggers power. The more space I gave my triggers the less they pushed for my attention.
It did mean however accepting that I was going to have a few bad days. Even once I had stopped resisting I knew a few days of discomfort and fear-driven behaviour would come. Days of not being able to concentrate, feeling scatty, feeling like you’re doing the wrong thing, even when you’re just sitting still, feeling disengaged, just frightened of life, of making a move in any direction.
In trying to fight the triggers, what I was really fighting were my bad days. You will all know what your bad days are like and how secretly desperate you are to never have them again. I didn’t want to ‘waste’ my precious time on this earth laying in bed, or feeling afraid to go out into the world, or to reach out to someone. But the reality is trying to fight these urges was making it worse. Being kind to myself and meeting myself where I was in my recovery in that moment was what was important. Accepting bad days and being triggered is probably one of the hardest things once you have seen how beautiful and alive the good days.
For me I was holding on to this narrative of ‘getting better’ and ‘being healed’ and the truth is you can heal and you can get better but this involves accepting bad days may come. That is what being healed really means, not fighting yourself, but accepting all that comes and being at peace with yourself whatever that looks like at the time.
Being kind to myself even when I was triggered was hard. I had this overwhelming sense that I should be ‘over this’ by now. After having a really magical few weeks of feeling amazing to sink into these feelings was in some ways unbearable. This is the old me I kept thinking to myself. I don’t want to be the old me anymore. But the reality is I will never not be the old me, all those experiences will live within me forever. The difference now is that I know there is more to life. Even if I can’t reach it for a few days or a few weeks I know it is there. The hole is just here to remind me, to give colour and texture to the rich fabric of life, it throws up things I can work on. While I may have fallen in, I can always find my way out.