Overwhelmed today

I had a massive anxiety attack through the night last night. The strange thing was I don’t know why or where it came from. It was just the pure emotion. It was intense and awful and when I woke up I was at a loss of what to do or what it could have meant. My theory is something I’ve been mulling over a bit lately; that when you’re healing, there will be times when pain, fear, anxiety come out which are signs that your body is feeling safe enough to let you feel. We store trauma and we don’t always have the capacity to feel the depth of it, but some of it is coming out recently because I’m increasing my capacity and safety with myself. I sure hope that’s true. Because it really sucks otherwise.

So not only did I have that disrupt my night and morning, I also began crying when I didn’t expect to during a lesson with someone. They were very gracious and gave me space to cry, but for the first while I was crying without knowing why. She guessed I might be feeling general overwhelm, and that started me crying again as soon as I heard it, so I think she was right. I am so tired of the way I do things. I think this exhaustion was building up over a while and just forced itself out today. I am always focusing on the doing. I push myself and expect a lot of myself. I judge my every action and assign a moral value to it. Not consciously, but it happens nonetheless. Boy, does it ever weigh me down. I am so tightly wound up. I try to let myself breathe but this has been in me my whole life, so it comes back on again as soon as I have something to do. It is EXHAUSTING. The intensity of this exhaustion is really prominent today, more so than I’ve felt it in months or even years. And it came very abruptly and without warning today.

I am grateful for it. Even if it’s been really uncomfortable, I appreciate that I’ve released some of it by crying and just feeling it. I’ve been trying to get a sense of my limits and well, looks like my body is doing what it can to assist me. I think I need to keep crying today and I can do so, which is unusual. I have a hard time letting myself cry but today the feelings are overriding that. It feels so scary thinking about letting others see my pain, but I want to trust that people won’t reject me. I want to be seen. And more than anything I want to just let myself BE. I’ve been thinking about a meditation habit for a couple weeks now and god is this ever a wake-up call about that. I know I’ll feel better tomorrow. But that’s tomorrow. Today I am in the dumps, wrung out and wishing I could change this part of myself with a snap of my fingers.