Week 42 - Sitting in the Power

At some point along the way, beyond the loss of my spouse, beyond the loss of my daughter, beyond chronic illness and unrelenting pain, beyond my expectations and dreams, unwanted changes, beyond it all, I have settled in a place called home, within.

I have not written these words lightly. I am still growing, changing, redefining, and learning new boundaries. I am 72 y/o and this year I put myself back in psychotherapy. Life is hard.

I have spent more than 30 years in psychotherapy, unraveling my problematic childhood, the losses in my life. Now I am finally getting down to what I need.

My human psyche is amazing in its ability to build walls of stone around pain. Those walls become cities with stop and go lights; warning systems and rules.

I am discovering the zones I exist in. The green zone “I am okay” is where I want to be every day every hour.  The yellow zone “something is up but I don’t know what” is the zone that lives next to my green zone and often I fluctuate in and out of it.

Then there is the orange zone “I feel stressed and I must take care of myself” while I am negotiating through this loud and fast moving inner place.

And finally there is the red zone “I am triggered and over the edge” zone where I am reacting and racing towards the edge of a cliff where I will sure meet my demise.

My inside voice is steadier now as I age, and yet it continues to commentate on every aspect of my daily life. It is helpful for me to identify what zone I am in. In a sense as I identify my zones, I step into a perspective outside of the drama and reminds me where I am.

For example, when I am in a red zone, I acknowledge I am triggered. The filter that lays over my view on life is laden with pain and loss, panic and an inability to find logic. I am triggered. 

Just by naming where I am, my narrator is not my trigger. My narrator is a calming presence that separates me from the trigger, and just hearing its presence, helps me initiate self-care until the storm is over.

Life is like nature. Battered with violent storms. Calmed in beautiful weather. We hunker down. We rise up. We renew.

Nature mentors us. We learn to breathe again. We lean on her strength. We soothe ourselves on the journey.

A new perspective is also freeing, and offers fresh air, fresh ideas and a point of view I could not see beyond the walls I built.