I am feeling a very delicious sort of relief right now. I feel like some parts of me have been silently holding their breath for the past few weeks, waiting for this moment. I'm sitting, the taste of nectarine and plum in my mouth, coffee perched on the dash, feet up, nestled into Hank's tricked-out leather BMW coupe seats, cupped in the arms of the panorama that is Culleenamore beach. I've been dying to get back to writing and this is it, the morning I made it back. Last week was big life admin and tidy the house and struggle with orthostatic stuff, the week and a half before was go on adVantures with Nick, all across the Island to see the aforementioned Tower of Lloyd and on to revisit our respective childhood holiday memories, with stops for dodgems and VR rollercoastering at Funtasia Dundalk, a seaside-holiday-feeling stay at Rush beach and finally on to my ancestral home of County Kilkenny.
So today is back to writing. I thought it would be yesterday, but there's a kind of logic that runs under the hood in my life these days that I'm remembering to trust more and more. I dearly wanted to spend yesterday writing but I sacrificed the time shopping for bedding and tidying the van. The sequence makes sense, in retrospect. I've been wanting to get a waterproof bottom sheet and a black fitted sheet (can't see black dog hair on a black sheet) for the van since I got it. I've learned the hard way what happens when memory foam gets damp and how slow it is to dry, so now that's sorted, if Kru jumps up after a rainy walk, or I have a coffee catastrophe, it's not a source of future difficulty. The other part of the logic was that I was really on my last legs spoon-wise and by the time I got to the afternoon yesterday my headache had a headache and having a bed that was tidy and reset was a delight that led to a good sleep, that led to my getting to writing feeling renewed and clearer this morning.
I'm thinking about this because I was listening to someone lately recounting a story about a man who practises obeying his body, valuing its wisdom and following its rhythm rather than leading from his thoughts*. The most extreme example given was not running for a boarding gate about to close if his body didn't want to run. I suspect I'm at a version of this too and the really tricky thing I'm finding about it at present is how disappointed some parts of me get when this means I do less of what I think would make me happy, eg. writing a letter every week. The part of me that prioritises autonomy at all costs (aka demand avoidance, depending on what frame you choose), is pretty certain that while routines and personal rules are great, forcing myself to do things because 'that's how I do it', or how I think I should do it, isn't healthy for me. The downside of that is more internal negotiation and learning to allow parts of myself to be disappointed, impatient or concerned, without rejecting them or allowing them to become the whole story of what's happening. I've discovered disappointment avoidance is a top priority for my younger parts and drives a lot of unconscious behaviour. So, this is what me learning how to assist and support my whole self looks like: recognition, acceptance, accommodation, negotiation, offers, flexibility. Sometimes the contrast makes me laugh, in the same way that improv comedy takes the expected response and flips it, I start by imagining the cultural programming and go from there. Feeling like you just want to give up and lie down? I give up and lie down. After a few minutes of that I usually start to understand where the overwhelm is coming from, far faster than muscling through and overpowering myself into a crisp.
Where my upbringing installed 'ignore unwanted feelings and do something that will feel reassuringly praiseworthy, productive or Good', the new move is to spot the attempt to flatten or flee a feeling, eg. resistance, wanting distraction, frustration, boredom etc. and first, offer acknowledgement. Then, offer an at least half-hearted attempt at comfort ('I'm sorry you're feeling that' is sometimes as much as I can do and it's enough). Next is usually 'what do you need?'. I might not get an answer and even if I do, I won't necessarily be able to meet it (that's where the negotiation comes in - trying things for one minute to see if they help etc.) but the presence of asking, the curiosity about it, frees up some of the energy that the resistance/static was using up, because a part usually wants to be listened to as much as anything. Having discomfort or a feeling state acknowledged, with genuine attention and some attempt at acceptance, often releases a lot of the charge for me.
Let's do a bit of time travelling.
The thin wine-and-pink floral carpet relays the cold of early morning floorboards straight into the soles of my feet. It is the 80s and the coal stove downstairs isn't sending warm water as far as the radiators of my small bedroom. I have slept with my vest and socks under the covers so they will be warm when I get up, the shock of cold clothes against warm skin is so unpleasant to my body. As I wrestle inside the womb of sleep-heat to put them on, gooseflesh-ripples and prickly nerves sparkle up my back as the cold air finds its way in. I begrudge the fuss of this, knowing I'm just going to pull the vest off again once I get to the bathroom to wash my face and armpits and get my school uniform on. I dismiss the quiet gnawing wonder of whether bed smells will accompany me into school for the umpteenth time. I cross the even-chillier landing to the bathroom with a practised hopscotching of the noisiest spots. The uniform is hanging near the radiator, where a small trickle of heat has taken the worst of the chill off the materials. The warm water is a joy, the rivulets of water running down my sides and wrists from an improperly wrung-out facecloth, not so much. There is so much sensation, cold bathroom air on wet skin, intense pleasure of hot facecloth on puffy eyes and sinus bones and there are things to remember to do, in the sequence, and it's hard to rush when I'm sleepy and keep spacing out.
I've gotten to the bathroom too slowly, unable to will myself out from under the covers any sooner, someone will be knocking impatiently soon. There is an electric fan heater on the wall, but using it will be commented on, electricity is expensive and I have understood the need to pick my battles from an early age. Better not to use it all the time and acquire a ban, than to use it sparingly enough to remain under the radar and keep it for a morning I really need it. The shirt has to be buttoned, I double-check the bottom button and hold my breath as I do them up. My tongue is wedged into the palate of my mouth. Trying to smooth the skirt-lining as I strain to tuck the shirt evenly, the whole affair riding up as I twist, the temperature difference relaying information from too much skin surface at once. My stomach is tight with tension. If I grip my muscles, if I am uncomfortable, I will remember to keep going quickly and not get lost in some thought or forget what I'm at and become delayed. It's like a whole-body version of crossing your fingers so you don't forget something. The self-imposed discomfort, added to the actual discomfort, forces haste. I just want to sit down, the whole way through this, I want to be already downstairs with my buttery toast and cereal. Because then I can let go and stare into the distance, unfocused, chewing and savouring. I share the thousand-yard stare with my father, who also doesn't seem to particularly enjoy this must-beat-the-traffic ceremony of becoming, and I enjoy that we can do this in silence.
The clothes will start to settle at this point too, reaching body temperature with the assistance of breakfast, distracting me from the uneven skirt-lining riding up on my stomach, the label prickles, one sock perennially inching its way down my shin and needing to be pulled up. And the faint feeling of wrongness that always accompanies this costume, that it is a costume, a uniform, yes, but also, not comfortable like my baggy tracksuit bottoms and collared polo-shirt, or my jeans and t-shirt and runners. This person I am now dressed up as, belongs to someone else, not to me. I have to pretend to be this one. I'm always dimly aware, in this skirt, of my underwear and the cold air moving around the tops of my legs. I don't like this feeling, I want to be safe and contained in something that can't fly up, or be lifted up. I live for PE day, when I can colour-code my polo shirt with my slouch-socks and wear my soft tracksuit and scruffy runners.
The beach I'm parked at today is a place I've come to at major junctions over the past decade or so. It is calmer and quieter than the side which receives the waves of the Atlantic ocean. It is the kind of generously expansive that lights your heart with hope and possibility. It was the setting of the shamanic journey I took four years ago where I received the message 'a kind life is made of kind decisions'. It was powerful enough to inspire me to start living my life from that perspective and memorable enough to stick. It has that same logic as Thich Nhat Hanh's 'there is no way to peace, peace is the way'. They both point out the obvious, but sounding simple doesn't make it simple to practise. I have found that to be kind to myself, I sometimes have to face things about myself that are difficult; the places where my self-esteem is still weak enough for me to wonder if I deserve a particular kindness. The rules I don't question about what makes me a good person and the subtle ways that preserving that identity can harm me and others. Kind doesn't always mean nice. Kind is sometimes honest in a way that will hurt.
To be kind is sometimes taking an overview and playing a longer game. Kind in the moment is not fighting with a part of me that wants chocolate after a hard day, kind for the long game is continuing to seek out and practise other ways to soothe myself and regulate so that I have options when I inevitably hit a difficult patch so I don't have to think on the spot. Kind is knowing that attempting more attunement to myself isn't a problem that, once cracked, preserves me from shit days. Kind is not calling it reparenting, because that isn't the kind frame. I'm not trying to undo something that was done wrong. I'm trying to offer myself more love than was available then, because it feels good and the more I offer it to myself, the more space I have for other people and that feels good. Put slightly more colloquially, more space for my bullshit means more space for your bullshit, means more space for the world's bullshit. And the more space I have, the less energy I waste in endless loops of reactivity, the more energy I have to actually be the gift that I am and enjoy the gift that you are and the gift that the world is. Noice.
And because of that kid in the bathroom, I wish I could go back in time and say, your nervous system is really sensitive to temperature change and sensory input because you are built that way, you just need more support and to be listened to. I can't time travel back to then, but I can do it now. I can buy the bedsheets and stop and start a hundred times every time I need to sit down and de-fluster. The same parts of me that found that difficult then find it difficult now and so my act of love to that child who I cannot physically comfort is to support who they became by judging myself less, by gently persisting in addressing why I'm irritated or disassociating or freaked out or whatever it is and not starting from a position that there is something wrong with me for feeling like that, but rather, the opposite: you are correct to be feeling a feeling about something, let's see if we can address it or do something to help you feel it and move through it and do what you need to do. As it turns out, feeling cared about and witnessed while you do a hard thing makes it slightly more bearable. I'm interested in what I think and feel about things, I am not a collection of nuisance reactions I need to run from, I am not a hindrance to other people because I am awkward or oversensitive or whatever framing would suit someone who doesn't have capacity to deal with something they don't have a formula for.
I want to live in a world where we just know that we all deserve that kind of presence and willingness to accept and act. I don't think we go without it because there's something wrong with society or there are evil people or governments are bad or any of the other thoughts that have plagued me as I grew up. I think the reason we don't get or give that treatment, all of us, the most powerful and rich included, is that we lack capacity. We need space (absence of pressure, regulation, groundedness) to tolerate ambiguity and to access our natural insight and the wisdom around us. We need capacity in order to listen and be with the difficulty of what's arising in the moment, which is often something separate from the story we're telling in our minds. The possible solutions, the ways forward, the answers and the help to do them are present and with us; we just need some time, some guidance and the willingness to ask for help. And, reassuringly, we can observe that capacity is something that is innate and grows when it's tended, on an individual, community and global scale.
*David Berceli is the person I heard about. I haven't looked into him a whole lot, but shaking is a part of my healing/maintenance work and the benefits are observable, polyvagal theory interrogation aside.
