Echo’s of the Past

Echo’s of the Past

Sometimes I still feel the echo’s. The remnants of my past. They do their best to latch on, to take hold and dig their claws back in. To drag me back into the depths of despair and depression. The old stories around imprisonment, loss of choice or control, that nothing ever changes. The frustrating part is that now it’s not someone else who’s imprisoning me. It’s myself who’s locked me in a cage. The walls of which are made up of nervous system dysregulation.

My nervous system learned that collapse was the only way to survive. If I just wanted less, strived for less, saw this stagnancy as comfort then it wouldn’t be so intolerable. Sitting there bed rotting, screen watching my life away to distract me from the mind-numbing boredom of my childhood. Fantasizing about the white night who would rescue me from my tower and take me on grand adventures. Wake me up, make me feel alive.

I feel frustration now when these remnants arrive. My therapist tells me to have self compassion. To give them grace and to be patient with them. Change is hard and overcoming programming even harder, but the truth is. I hate the person who made me like this sometimes. Imprisoned me to my own stagnation, boredom and loneliness as a child when I had no choice.

I’ve come such a long way in my healing journey. I’ve done so much great work, made so much progress and I am, genuinely, healthier and happier than I have ever been. Freer too. Which is why it’s so frustrating to still see how often I have to battle my own collapse. Functional freeze others might call it.

Every time I feel like I’ve overcome it, it drags me asunder. Another day wasted screen rotting or procrastination rotting. Chores left undone, projects left incomplete, goals still just a dream. But the shame, it lives on. Along with the judgment, the criticism, the frustration and self hatred. Why can’t I do this? Why can’t I just do the shit that normal people do? Why is it so hard to just clean my house or stay consistent? Why is it so hard to make new friends, meet people, leave my comfort zone?

For someone with nervous system collapse I’ve done a lot of courageous things in my life. I’ve lived in four different states, travelled to Thailand alone for four months, became a class V raft guide, ski patroller and ICU nurse. But what struck me as infuriating, is that within all of those instances of leaving my comfort zone, I always found a new one. Travel to a new country? Great, hugely out of your comfort zone. Get there, find a coffee shop, restaurant and routine you like and don’t deviate from it the whole time you’re there. Become a class V raft guide? Great, learn your lines, struggle to deviate from them and explore new ones. Every instance becoming a constant internal battle of trying to push myself out of my new found comfort zone. It’s FUCKING EXHAUSTING!

I had a different therapist many years ago. She wasn’t educated in somatic work or polyvagal theory so we didn’t have the language to describe what was happening internally. I remember the first time she told me that healing isn’t linear and there is no end to it. An obvious insight for most, but I was still clinging onto the hope and idea that I just needed to find the right thing to overcome myself. So when she told me that, it wasn’t relief, I was consumed with despair. I looked at her, face drawn, eyebrows raised in shock and said, “you mean to tell me that I’m stuck with me for the rest of my life?!” She smiled at me sadly and nodded her head, trying her best to reframe my pain. We didn’t know it then, but the part of me I felt so forlorn about being stuck with for the rest of my life was my nervous system. My chronic state of dysregulation. Of my perpetual cycles of functional freeze followed by a forceful push into fight/flight. This was why high adrenaline sports were so appealing to me. They were my knight in shining armor. The things that pulled me up and out of myself, but even still I couldn’t escape it. In every new environment it found a way in. In every moment of lull or quiet or shift in season, the collapse found me again.

The constant battle of fighting myself internally every day wore on me. It created burnout and a loss of love for the thing that had saved me. Many years later, in my mid 30’s I hit rock bottom.

Somatic Psychotherapy, Polyvagal theory and Internal Family Systems Therapy saved me. Literally. And so did cutting myself off from the root. It was a concerted effort and it took me years to finally feel better. Most days I feel really good. Hopeful, surrendered, content, peaceful, living in the moment with faith. But nervous system regulation is still a battle, weekly, if not daily. A thing that I have to be mindful of and pay attention to. I can’t just eat when I feel like it or ignore what’s happening inside, because that leads to collapse. If I let collapse go on too long then it leads stagnation, depression and then despair.

It’s a daily practice. It requires daily attention and I still feel its pull. I get immensely frustrated by it, but I know that it won’t last. Tomorrow will be a new day and maybe tomorrow I’ll be more regulated. Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel like trying something new or going somewhere alone or working towards my goals. And if I don’t, I’ll try my best not to shame myself for it. To have self love, understanding and compassion because healing doesn’t happen over night and the work is never done.

We want healing to be like everything else in our lives, instant. We want to see improvement yesterday, but it doesn’t work like that. It’s a slow, continuous, intentional and committed uphill climb and I have faith that when I get to the top, the view will be breathtakingly resplendent. It’ll be me, in all my beautiful, messy, dark, imperfect glory and I will love me for it. Because in the end, I committed to me. To my journey, to my healing, to continuing the battle. I’m still here, climbing and I hope you are too.