Tales of a stressful month, being sick and pregnant, watching movies, and subsequent psychoanalysis of the population at large ;)
To think, about a month ago I was looking down the barrel at this month (May) and feeling overwhelmed and stressed out about everything coming up. Everything was fun things; our baby gender reveal party and may long weekend both included. But it felt like a lot. Now it's May 25th and all of it's passed and I'm sitting at the tiny wood table in our acreage cabin, coffee in hand, planning on packing up our things and heading back into the city after nearly a week out here.
The month of May pretty much went as I thought it would. It was stressful. It felt like there were so many moving parts, so many people involved in planning and get togethers. Communication efforts between friends were not hitting the marks and it felt like there was an edge to a lot of conversations. Not to mention trying to get our garden planted and working around weather and praying we weren't too early since spring this year has felt very untrustworthy. I probably shouldn't be at all surprised that after our gender reveal party (which was so wonderful and I'm so thankful for my friends who helped make it happen and for everyone who came), I came down with a cold that's been circulating our friend group. And, I didn't just get a little cold, I got ROCKED by it. Cold, flu, covid (?) who knows, I don't really care to be honest what the name of the sickness was I just know I was sick and it sucked.
We all came out to our cabin for the long weekend and there was several drop-outs due to being sick or also feeling too busy. I got sick the second day out here and spent the majority of the long weekend in bed, unable to sleep because I couldn't breathe well or stop coughing, and being pregnant I couldn't take much of anything to help ease my symptoms so I could get the rest I needed. But anyways, this isn't a blog about stress or about me being sick.
While I was down and out, and my boyfriend also subsequently caught the sickness too, we watched a lot of movies. The cabin is loaded with old DVDs and it was kind of fun to dig out older movies. We wound up watching Shutter Island (classic favourite) and another one called K-PAX which I'd never seen but turned out to be great. Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges...can't really go wrong with that! Without realizing it, both those movies held a similar theme: human psychology and a traumatic event that was so painful that the ones experiencing it had to block it out and invent an entirely new story about who they were.
Combined with my regular Tuesday night circles where I'm witnessing similar revelations, and chatting with Bentley about people and the things we believe and make up about ourselves it became clear that those movies are such an astute commentary on what everyone does, in varying degrees, all the time. We all have traumatic events in our lives, some more obvious than others. And we all made up an alternative version of what it meant in an effort to protect ourselves. That's classic ego stuff...I'm not making it up.
We build these new stories about who we think we are and our identity becomes what we've made up. It works, more or less, for a while. But it eventually gets itchy and uncomfortable. That's where, I believe, all these anxieties root from. These fears and worries. These phenomenons of getting in our heads and building up scenarios that aren't even necessarily real. It's all to suit the story. To be clear, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, but I am going to ask a question. How's your story working for you? Are you happy? If your answer is a resounding, "yes I'm happy!" then great! You can skip reading this. But if the answer is a slower, analytical, trying to convince yourself that you're mostly happy but life isn't always happy and somethings are hard and nobody is really happy are they....then I'd suggest spending some time with yourself on this subject.
I used to be that person who seemed happy all the time. I did a lot of things, had a lot of friends, worked several jobs at once; sleep when I'm dead kind of mentality. And I convinced myself I was happy for a while. But it wasn't real happiness. I was chasing. Chasing...approval, accolades...worth. I was constantly on alert, looking for cues from outside of me to indicate if I was "doing it right" or not. I was adapting, selecting, moulding, camouflaging and twisting into whatever shape I thought I was supposed to be. And the times I did follow my heart and actual self on something, if there was outside resistance to it, I was so terrified that I wouldn't be accepted that I quickly retreated back to the mould.
But after a while it became more and more uncomfortable to pretend. That's when depression started settling in. Feeling hopeless and like I just couldn't seem to "get it". Everyone else seemed happy and like they were doing the right things and life was working for them and it was only me who seemed to have a screw loose or something. I remember, vividly, writing in a journal once (when I was in Italy working as a nanny, actually) and writing, "I think God must have just made me wrong or something". My heart aches a little bit for that 19 year old girl who wrote those words because I know she really felt them. What an unbearable sentiment, to believe that there is just something fundamentally broken about you.
Fast forward to today, after years of learning to look at beliefs like that and figuring out where they came from and methodically and dedicatedly undoing them. I can honestly say my life is completely different. I don't have the same story that I'm broken anymore. I don't believe that I was created with parts missing or a glitch anymore. I don't struggle with depression anymore. Think about that. Most psychologists will tell you that depression (and most other clinically diagnosed 'disorders') are lifelong sentences that you just will have to learn to cope with. Coping is the best outcome. I don't buy it. I'm living proof that looking inward and changing my own stories cured depression. I've witnessed it in others, too. To be clear, it's not a one time fix-all thing. This is a way of life and a practice. But it's brought meaning to my life, and excitement and genuine happiness! Not being a slave to outside opinion and approval has been the key out of the jail I put myself in and hadn't even realized.
I know I've spoken and written at length about this and I'll keep doing it. Watching those movies was a reminder of how powerful the mind is. It's the operator's choice which experience it wants to live in. I can look around at the world and focus on the chaos, disparity, unfairness, struggle, suffering, corruption etc. or I can look around and focus on things that I love and that make me smile and laugh. I know there are you rolling your eyes at what you're interpreting as spiritually bypassing things with lip service "peace and love and rainbows" bullshit. That's NOT what I'm talking about here. Thing is, I CAN'T focus on the lovely things around me until I do my deep dive inwards to find out what's blocking it. True spirituality is hard and messy and ugly sometimes. Because I have to dig through all my gross beliefs; the hate, anger, fear, blame, to realize I made it all up to find that love was always there. I just buried it under as much garbage as I could find.
Why do we do that? Why do we cover up the love and choose to live in the struggle? Well, because most of us have deeply held beliefs about ourselves that tell us we don't deserve the happiness. We're wrong (for some reason) and bad and guilty and our penance is to live in some form of struggle. It's not really hard to pin point. On top of that, we glorify certain struggles. You're super stressed from work? Good for you! you're such a hard worker. You're starving and exhausted? You're such a dedicated mother/father. Don't even get me started on societies insidious brainwashing that sells the story that living in struggle is honourable. Bullshit.
The world will ALWAYS provide evidence for that I was to see. Instagram algorithms use the already innately human tendency to look for what it knows we want to see. It takes intention and some effort to forge a new path and to notice the things you ignored before. So what? Time is passing anyways, I don't see anything being more important that working towards living happily and peacefully.
When I think back on my month of May I see very clearly which of my old beliefs and patterns were working hard to run the show. The belief that it's my job to look after everyone else's happiness (at the expense of my own well being), the belief that someone else's unhappiness is my fault and my problem to fix. Among others. It took an emotional toll which turned into a physical one. I do have to acknowledge myself and the work I've done because despite falling into old patterns, there were still moments of breakthrough for me. Amongst the struggle where I hit my intolerance level, instead of cowering and bailing on things I actually stood up for myself and said things that I wouldn't have dared say in the past. Those are my victories and where I see my growth. Learning boundaries and honouring them better than I used to. It's those victories that add up and build me into the person I want to be and who I feel truly aligned in. My past of adapting to suit everyone else isn't something I'm willing to go back to.
So I hope you think about the things in your life you do that don't feel so good anymore. You don't have to do anything beyond acknowledging them, but noticing where there is some discomfort rather than smothering it with activities of various kinds is the first step to making positive changes. Changes can be painful, for sure. But I haven't experienced anything more painful that living in constant self-betrayal and coping mechanisms.
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A little reminder that support for this journey is ample. Send me a message if you're curious about the healing circles or how to work with your own limiting beliefs.