“There is more to life than increasing its speed” - Gandhi
Have you too been forced by life to slow down without having given your consent? Have you experienced having the rug pulled out from underneath you, been stopped in your tracks and life never was the same? In my case it was due to an accident years ago.
Audio version
Are you dealing with any of these challenges?
- A disability (visible or invisible)
- chronic fatigue
- Lyme's disease
- a traumatic event
- burn-out
All of the above can contribute to hyper sensitivity. Is this holding you back from the life you want to live?
Prior to the accident, life felt like a bag full of pebbles. I had an abundance of them and there was a never ending supply. For any activity I wanted to do I just paid with a pebble and the bag got magically refilled. I handed out pebbles for working, socializing and any kind of physical and mental activities I had to do. I always had pebbles for what ever I wanted to do. I was never short.
After the accident this experience changed drastically. Anything I do now costs me much more. I feel short of pebbles most of the time. I have to retreat for days to recover in order to fill up the bag again.
While before I only paid little, now I have to spend a lot more coping with heat, noise, socializing, mental activities, complex environments like a supermarket. Others seem to have more pebbles in their bag and can still pull out more once they are tired. My bag empties much faster now.
Let me tell you how this happened
I was in my thirties with life going along nicely. Living and working in Colorado as a psychotherapist. I felt active, vibrant, high functioning, professional and intelligent. Of course not everything was perfect in my life but I was involved and excited about life. I had goals, plans and dreams. As a therapist I would visit those who needed help. I was used to being the helper, not the "helpee".
Then, 17 years ago I was rear-ended by a drunk driver and life totally changed. I spent 6 years doing treatments full time. These included cognitive rehabilitation, vision therapy, physical therapy and many other different healing modalities. You name it, I did it. I had to sleep for the most part of those 6 years since my brain could not handle stimulus .
I eventually had to live in the middle of nowhere in order to shut out stimulus and live a very quiet lifestyle. I was pretty resourceful in terms of reducing my living expenses. I lived in retreat centers, ashrams or a tiny cabin in the woods. I managed. I had no idea that the impact of this event would change my life to this extent up to now.
If you are anything like me and have experienced such a life changing event that left you hypersensitive, I am sure you can relate. You too might deal with increased anxiety or depression. In general you might feel more vulnerable and emotional. Maybe you too never feel good enough.
I was not able to forgive myself for having a compromised brain and my perfectionism got in the way. Most people are hard on themselves anyway. When you had to take personal losses that changed part of your identity, such as:
- professional
- social
- financial
- mental
- physical
it becomes easier to obsesses about your shortcomings. In this situation it is easy to think that there is something fundamentally wrong with you. Feeling strained, and fatigued most of the time might cause you to feel numb or calloused towards the beauty of life simply because of the overwhelm. The frustrating part you might experience as well is that once you were able to do certain things, and now you can’t understand or accept that you no longer can do them. Self loathing and the struggle with self esteem and self confidence due to these changes are often the case.
Do you also have days where you feel normal and then you have days where your symptoms surface for some reason and you wonder if you are crazy?
I imagine that you too might long for peers that understand your challenges. Often for friends and family that is very difficult - especially if you are dealing with an invisible disability.
I want to bring together people who can relate and get what it is like to live with these challenges. Even though we all feel sorry for ourselves at times, I want to bring together people that are wanting to move beyond these kind of feelings and use their experience to their advantage wherever possible. I want to bring together people that want to inspire, encourage and give hope to each other.
Here you can share resources, build resilience so you can be content with who you are now, including your strengths and struggles.
It is important to be with people who remind you that you are enough the way you are. I want to bring together people that want to move from the head into their heart, to live that way and share that with others. The intention being to develop more compassion and kindness towards ourselves in spite and because of our limitations to then extend the same to others.
We can bring forth in us that which is unique, wholesome, special and has never been touched by any disability, traumatic event or whatever it might have been.
“One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore. - André Gide.
We will teach each other how to live this one life we have been given to the fullest so we can enjoy who we are now and how life is now. Together we can fill our bags with new pebbles. Join me.
