The Body Keeps the Score: Feeling is Believing
Everything is okay, they still love you. Everything is okay, they still love you. No one is leaving you. Everything is okay. You're okay. You'll be okay. You'll be okay. You are okay. You are okay.
I have to repeat things to myself in my head and out loud over, and over, and over again, to get through every day. I need the repetition to believe it's true. I need the repetition because things change so fast. People can turn on you so fast. Life moves so fast and even though it's okay in one moment, it might not be okay in the next moment. Even though someone loves you in one moment, they might change their mind the next.
It takes a lot of time out of my day and a lot of head space.
Feelings are different. Feelings are internalized beliefs. A feeling… you don't need repeated, you already believe it. Because your body believes it.
Your body tells you the story before the head has time to process it. Your head is what responds to the body. I personally, respond mentally to my body's reactions.
That's why DBT skills are designed to slow down your body. It gives your mind a chance to work.
The body keeps the score.
It turns out the body keeps the score in positive ways, not just the negative ones. It doesn't just keep the score of trauma.
I'm changing.
I can feel it.
And like Glennon Doyle says, feeling is believing.
I don't feel myself losing everything when someone sounds frustrated with me, EVERY time, anymore.
With certain people, at least. My body is learning, a little bit. It also takes other people in your life not triggering you so that your body doesn't react in unhelpful ways. It's partly that too.
If we don't have the resources to stop it, the truth is, we can't stop it. We need more help. That's why I'm seeking more help, to be able to rewire the part of my brain that can't stop just responding to everything that triggers my trauma.
Someone told me once to write every day, even when I'm not inspired. I was inspired to write that, to write about my breakthrough, noticing my body giving me a chance to remain calm and it remembering the people who are safe and taking note of newly built trust.
Really though, I don't have anything else. I'm really sick right now. I haven't been able to sleep, I can't go into work, and I'm in the midst of finals. FINALS. Talk about timing.
It also might just be my body telling me to never take on this heavy of a load schedule again in my life, since it's had me on the couch wiped out for the last few days unable to do anything.
Feeling is believing. My body said that if I couldn't logically tell myself I'm doing too much, then it will show me. Well, feeling is believing. I physically understand right now that I've been doing too much. Have you ever had that experience? On a run you just feel completely dead on? Or when your brain becomes mush when you're trying to finish a paper? Or when you can't go out with friends because you are physically completely exhausted?
We think it's lazy to not be overworked but being overworked is slowly just killing us.
What I'm thinking about right now is a vacation. When I started getting mad at other people's photos from tropical places, I realized that I wasn't mad at them, I was actually happy for them, I just also wanted that.
Feeling is believing. I didn't believe I needed a vacation or a break until I felt jealous that someone else had one and anger about them getting it and me not getting it.
It feels selfish and self absorbed to talk about, but it's just true. No one needs a martyr hanging around.
Our expectations of ourselves can ruin other people's experiences with us, because we get bitter if they aren't as "selfless" as we think we are… really, just overworked, and making everyone around us miserable too because
Our attitudes probably suck (and people can sense it, even when we don't think they can and we're smiling, people sense self-righteousness) and
We get bitter at them for not being as miserable and overworked or doing as much as us and expect that of them. Expectations come out and show, even if we don't express it. People can tell if we don't think they're meeting our expectations, even if none of us even know what those expectations are.
My mom told me that I'm becoming a more compassionate person, because I'm being more self compassionate.
Isn't that so interesting?
We really can't give compassion if we can't give it to ourselves. We wouldn't understand the concept.
We might be able to do it short term but then get bitter that they aren't meeting the expectations that we've set for ourselves.
"If I have to be perfect, if I have to take responsibility and do everything right and never make you upset and be thoughtful and encouraging and loving and never say the wrong thing, then gosh darn it, so do you!"
and then… the “You are such an idiot, how could you be such an idiot? Why would you say/do that? This is why people can’t stay in your life” and even if you aren’t thinking it consciously… “why don’t they feel like an idiot?”
We can't believe in compassion if we can't feel compassion. We can't KNOW compassion if we can't feel compassion. We can't accept compassion, if we don't feel compassion.
WOW, feeling is so powerful!
I used to spend days going over and over and over what someone said wrong.
I had a really horrible couple weeks a few months ago, largely in result of an interaction I had with a few important people to me.
I was infuriated and terrified from it, but I did something interesting.
I wrote down everything good that they did.
I went back and told them everything that was helpful. All of the ways that they've grown and what they used to do that wouldn't have been helpful, that they actually don't do anymore, and how I was encouraged by that.
I felt and gave compassion. I made generous assumptions. I'm a better woman for it.
Maybe I'm becoming more of a woman for it.
I'm 24 years old, and the inside of me still feels like a small child when I get scared or triggered. But right now, I'm finding things I can do to grow. I might not have the resources to rewire my trauma right now, but I have the resources to teach myself self compassion so I can give compassion.
I think that's a really big step.
Like I said, I wasn't super inspired today, but I am home sick and these are my thoughts. Hopefully I won't fail my finals.
Talk to you in a couple of weeks.
