The In-Between

I have spent much of my time alone during the past year or so, focusing on my mental and spiritual health. I've been meditating and I quit drinking alcohol almost entirely in 2024 after letting my consumption creep up too much during the pandemic. I have no idea what exactly it was that healed my nervous system, but it has been a total game changer to live in a body that is relaxed almost all of the time. I keep noticing at work that things that used to accelerate my heart rate (even something as dumb as the phone ringing or someone popping their head in my office door) no longer do; my body is less reactive to stressors great and small. 

A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from my daughter at 2 a.m. saying she had gotten in a car accident in Canada. (She's fine!) Once upon a time, a call like that would have had me jumping out of bed with a racing heart, but this time was different. I was calm the whole time that I was getting ready and going to retrieve her. She was not hurt and that was truly all that mattered in that moment to my nervous system. 

In years past, I would have presented a composed front to the world during a situation like this, but it took a lot of effort to don the appearance of calm when my heart was beating out of my chest. This calm is different; every organ, muscle, and tissue in my body feels deeply composed. There is no window dressing. This is authentic. The inner and the outer correspond. 

I've had a couple of other emotionally upsetting experiences lately too-- things that would have evoked a strong emotional reaction from me in the past. But I find myself moving through these experiences with relative ease. It's not that I don't have feelings, it's just that those feelings no longer affect my body the way that they once did, and that makes them a thousand times easier to acknowledge, honor, and release to the universe. None of it is meant to stay inside my body. It doesn't belong to me. 

The more upsetting the experience, the more likely it is to activate my nervous system-- particularly if it triggers old emotional wounds. But even when things are very triggering, I find it easier to observe my own emotions as they arise and leave me. Everything dissipates faster and I return to regulation much more quickly. During these moments, I've noticed that my internal Observer (higher self?)-- whatever you call the part that oversees meditation sessions and watches thoughts and feelings arise and leave-- can observe all of my innerworkings and understand them all. It can see that my body still houses an old version of me alongside a new one. When an upsetting event occurs, I do sometimes see my old reactivity kick in at first. But when my Observer notices it, it can shift my focus to the newer version that I am still becoming, and I can shift into it. That newer version views every single moment as a gift from the universe, no matter what it is, and trusts that it is in my highest good, even if it hurts like hell in the moment.* Pain is a teacher, not a punishment. And with a well-regulated nervous system, I can integrate those lessons very quickly and simply move on. There's nothing from the past to get hung up on.

It's interesting to me that the old version of me is still accessible to me if I choose it. I can access the old thought patterns and harmful narratives that I used to repeat to myself all the time-- stories that trapped me and further activated my nervous system in a vicious cycle. They are well rehearsed. Now when I access that old self, I find myself seeing as if from above how the situation I am in would play out if I were to allow that self to control my behavior. Every time I do, I always land on the thought of middle-of-the-night sweaty anxiety, which is the pit of hell, and that's basically where all of that kind of self-talk leads.

I am so grateful for this new perspective, and I recall so well what life was like before I acquired it, that I would never consciously choose to return to my old self. I see my life through new eyes as it is unfolding. I have conversations with my old self sometimes and then I choose better. This is what actual healing looks like.

 

* The Uses of Sorrow
 - By Mary Oliver

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.                     

 

Dissociation

I'm pretty open about the fact that I am a childhood sexual abuse survivor. The effects of that abuse have permeated every facet of my life in ways I'm still figuring out. One notable way is that I historically have dissociated quite a bit. I was aware that I did this during extreme duress becuase it would be very obvious then; I would be almost watching myself from a distance. But dissociation is a weird experience because it's hard to even know when you're doing it. And when you do it for your entire life, it's just how you are-- and it's very subtle. It also robs you of the self-awareness needed to see that you are doing it.

Last year, I started a lovingkindness meditation practice that has changed my life profoundly in deep and far-reaching ways. I started doing it because I didn't like my own internal, negative reactions to other people in many situations and I was looking for a practical way to change that. Meditation certainly did that, but it has also done so much more-- some things even more profound than what I want to share here about how I stopped dissociating because of doing it. It simply stopped happening. It grounded me in my body, my breath. 

I'm not sure when exactly I stopped dissociating, but I first noticed it when I sat down and watched a movie with my daughter a few months ago. It was the first movie I had watched in awhile, and for the first time in my life, it was effortless to follow the plot. People have always made fun of how much of movies I forget. I would have to exert an extreme amount of effort to follow a movie plot before. It was something I always struggled with, and my way of dealing with it would be to tell myself (inside my head) the story of what was happening in the movie as I was watching it-- like a little plot summary-- and I would simultaneously be watching the movie and missing parts of it while I was summarizing in my head what had happened thus far. But if I didn't do that, I would have no idea what had happened. It was really a taxing exercise. 

I never realized that the reason I couldn't follow a movie plot was because I was dissociating while I was watching it. I WASN'T really watching it; I couldn't sit in my body long enough to watch it. It’s kind of like being on a telephone call with a bad connection, only the telephone is your body and you’re interfacing with reality and it keeps cutting out; you have to fill in the gaps the best you can. TV shows were ok because they are shorter, but even some longer or more plot-dense shows gave me issues. For whatever reason, books are totally different. I think it may be because reading basically IS dissociating. Your body is doing one thing and your mind is sunk into the other world created by the author. 

It totally blew my mind when I watched a whole movie effortlessly, followed the plot, and enjoyed it. Life is going to be so much easier this way. I can't wait to watch ALL THE MOVIES!

It also dawned on me that I learned to dissociate when I felt the most abandoned, and that dissociation is learned self-abandonment. And in the same moment, I realized that I don't ever have to abandon myself again, and I won't. Not for anything or anyone. 

Human

My notion of what it means to be human
Is expanding in time with the universe,
Each inhalation creating more space
To collect every prior version of Self
At the table of limitless knowing.

Around this table, we all join hands
And bow our heads to receive
The feast of the unfolding moment
We welcome in when we breathe.

no time

time is always on your mind
never your heart

words flow out of my hands
get stuck in my throat

there is no beginning
there is no end

there's no such thing as getting ahead
try as i might inside my head

there is no going back
to alter your past.

i'll meet you in the moment
when we both learn how to hold it

Inside the Web

When you live inside a web
The whole world trembles on a thread,
Which can be somewhat terrifying,
Until you turn around and realize
That you're the one who's spinning it. 
Then you know you are the web,
And the world ceases to exist.

The Wordless Council

Come walk with me down to the bench 
At the bend in the sidewalk
Where the river and the canal meet and talk--
One from the depths and one from the shallows--
One moving fast and one moving slowly--
So each flows into each,
So the wordless council meets.

You think you'll never be forgiven
For the things you didn't do,
And that's not true. The reason you can't be forgiven
Is that the blame never belonged to you.

So let it go to nameless tributaries
Reclaimed by the earth
And let these words be the quiet room
Where you remember your soul's worth.

Shadow

Lost in the woods, I sat down by a tree,
And I asked it which way I should go.
"Inward and upward," whispered its leaves,
And the roots said, "Follow your shadow."

Meanwhile the bark, where I rested my
Shoulders remarked, "I have always grown
Outward in every direction--
Or at least in the ones you can see."

So I asked what it is that I do not see,
And he said, "You're not separate from me."