Disassociation

Coming home to my body after a lifetime of dissociation is terrifying.

I am feeling emotions I’ve never felt before.

The low level anxiety that has gone unrecognized since ever is a roaring inferno.

My entire system feels like it’s on the brink of collapse, and my normal coping strategy (leaving my body) is the very strategy I am cognizant I am healing.

The only way out, is through.

What’s reliving through my anxiety are memories.

Memories of recent and distant past to all the times I put other people’s needs before my own.

Memories of being taken advantage of, talked down to, bullied, invalidated.

Thoughts of how I wish I would have done things different.

How I wish I would have stood up for myself, spoken my truth, gave my voice instead of silent submission.

It feels endless, looping around memories like a dog chasing its tail, feeding the flames of my perceived injustice.

So I breathe, and notice the jagged breath barely audible and mobile in my chest.

Thoughts leap to judge, to critique, to fix, to ponder the nature of this small, insignificant, barely alive breath.

It’s me. I see.

When I’m pacing in thoughts and ripped with overwhelm, my breathe does what it does and matches me.

Mirrors my experience, and it has been a mirror all along.

The ally and confidant to my racing thoughts and electrically charged, short circuited nervous system.

The breath is my tell and it is the breath that saves me.

“I am here” I say to myself, a broken record repeating this masterful song.

“I am here.”

I touch my body to believe what I’m saying and with trepidation and shame pay a notice to my breathing.

She’s slowing down, I’m slowing down.

Progress.

Painful feelings I notice are trying to associate meaning and like a whip I am snapped back into my stories.

The meanings have grown in size over the years and are overpowering my feelings. The stories I believe to be true about my experience, about myself, about my feelings grip ahold of my awareness and spin me around for another ride.

“I am here.”

I touch my body.

I breathe.

I count to 4 and attempt an inhale.

I count to 4 and I exhale.

I focus my mind to my breath and I tell myself, “just try 5, see what happens.”

1, 2, 3, 4… 1, 2, 3, 4

“It’s not working!!” says the pain.

“Keep going” says my knowing.

I shake and shudder, yawn and settle in.

This is good, it’s working, I’m calming down.

Fire scorching my belly, I notice curiosity towards understanding it.

Heart rate quickens, nervous system excites, I’m drawn to my thoughts and the ride picks up again.

I’ve been here before, I recognize this pattern. My choice is in returning to my body and meeting rest.

But all I see is the pain, all I notice is the parts of me that are blackened, forgotten, disregarded.

All I feel is hurt and shame and grief and guilt, I am overpowered by the suppression of self abandoning.

I am fighting myself, fighting to feel and fighting to protect, hoping to correct and reveal to myself the wisdom that lives beyond.

“Welcome everything” I hear a soft voice say.

I’ve heard this voice before, I’ll try things her way.

I lay down my sword and open my arms and lifetimes of oppression come flooding through my pores.

Primal screams, guts wretch clean, my body becomes the tidal wave.

I feel wronged by the past and right in the present.

I reconcile duality through my body’s relearned wisdom.

I soften into the hard places, I breathe into the empty caverns, I remember what I had forgotten, I live in the places I’ve died from.

This is what it means to be whole.