Keep breathing

It's been a hard two weeks since I last posted. Exhaustion has been lurking everywhere: surprise! surprise! just found out I am anemic! I just thought, I was tired 'cause I am pregnant. The lack of iron explains many tears and mood swings as well as my lack of energy.

So, feeling heavy with the addition of breathlessness, cramps, back pain and inability to drag myself around town, I have been feeling rather frustrated as my mind wanted to do things that my body did not feel could follow at all...

What a typical image: contemporary mum, living in London, busy working and trying to spin as 'many plates' as she can, ALL THE TIME. So I shift between telling myself, "you can do it" and "slow down...PLEASE!!!". It is indeed a constant battle, which I am aware affects many friends of mine, many colleagues and I suspect the majority of people living in London, whether they are parents or not.

Fast 'thinking', as I call it, can be highly addictive as it produces lots of adrenaline and can really keep us going until we crash or break down, or just feel miserable and chronically tired. So, how do I actually slow down? Well, one of my magic words is still AWARENESS: whenever I recognize the sympotms of rushing, speeding up, and funnily enough, missing out on life (while I am too busy thinking and planning...), I let myself become aware of what that actually feels like, not just in my head, but especially in my body. This process normally puts me in touch with my emotions and quite often I have a bit of a realisation: when I am rushing around, if I can just let myself stop and consciously breath even for just one minute, I suddenly realise not only how tired I am, but also how sad I may be feeling, for having bypassed other things in my life, for having nelgected my health, and for having possibly neglected my child, my partner, my family or my friends.
Everytime I chose to slow down or to stop, I must let go: let go of ideals, let go of opportunities, let go of my mantra 'I WANT EVERYTHING, NOW!' and I must embrace my limitations and once again just be ok with it. Again, this is easily said, much more difficult to achieve in practice.
Generally for me the formula to deal with difficult feelings is about AWARENESS, ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, SELF-EXPRESSION/RELEASE (meaning talking to someone, have a little dance, a little scream, make a drawing, play some music, you chose...) and LETTING GO.
However, this process that sounds as a rather private one, does not happen in isolation: we all belong to "a world", even if we can feel very disconnected at times, and so a sense of what support and connections we have in the world is fundamental to go through difficult stages, phases, paths, feelings, etc. It means considering others, and how we feel towards them, how they affect us and how we affect them. It means chosing to be responbile for myself and my behaviour given WHO I want to be in my world and for others. Sometimes, as I am rushing around, I realise I may have hurt someone I love: this morning I shouted at my daughter because she had forgotten to change her knickers and I (not her) was LATE (at least that's what I thought!). Her face droppped, but she didn't say a word. She has seen me like that before. My heart always cringes afterwards and I think to myself, "Do I really want myself to lose control and release my anxiety on my little one, who is actually  not responsible for how I am feeling?" The answer this morning was NO and I said SORRY to her. I wanted her to know it wasn't about her, it was about me being stressed and anxiety. That's all I needed to say.
Saying SORRY, when it's really meant and felt, may not repair what's happened, but indeed it offers an opportunity for re-owning one's feelings that have been wrongly misplaced onto someone else, who we have just used to dump our garbage onto. By saying sorry and taking responsibility for ourselves, we can lift the weight we sometimes unawarely and unwillingly place onto little or vulnerable people, or so to speak, just innocent people!
By admitting my mistakes, taking responsibility and showing that I can bear the sense of guilt without an immediate need for re-demption, I become humane again, I come to life, and so I can cry and smile at the same time. And breathe.