Fighting A Losing Battle
I only seem to notice my balance when I’ve lost it. I try to put all these safeguards in place — yoga, meditation, journaling — mechanisms to help me maintain a mindful, balanced life. But every now and then, something will knock me off-guard, and I’ll find myself quickly spiralling before I can help it.
If I’m lucky, I’ll notice the spiral and I’ll stop to take a moment to regroup — I’ll put pen to paper, or pick up my phone and message a trusted friend, or if I’m really struggling, I might reach out to my Coach or my ToGetHer Further community, who always seem to know exactly what to say.
Sometimes I won’t notice the spiral until it’s too late, until I’ve gone past the point where I shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery, let alone making important decisions. Or sometimes the spiral happens so quickly that it feels like nothing I do even matters, and then I need to remember how to pick up the pieces and start all over again — the never-ending balancing act that is the joy of human existence.
I recently made a mistake — I proudly presented inaccurate information to a group of my peers on my Coaching course, then sat back down to hear myself corrected by the very next presentation. This should have been a simple matter, a mere error, a minor factual inaccuracy, but I felt revealed — my ‘good student’ persona had been torn off like a mask, and the ‘entertainer’ in me felt like a con artist.
I picked up my notepad, trying to grasp at the methods I knew were tried and trusted — writing down “I’ve made a mistake. It’s ok to make a mistake. I’m learning and growing.” But it did nothing. I sat there, cold and clammy, with my heart racing, waiting for a break so I could name my shame to my nearest, trusted colleagues, but their reassurances fell flat for me. It wasn’t enough, the spiral had happened so quickly that I was already in that place of dread, totally off-balance I almost felt as if I were out of my skin, disjointed from my body, completely ungrounded.
After restless night of attempting to sleep, disturbed by the panicked jolts of anxiety I experience whenever I find myself in that dark place of self-recrimination and regret, I got up and wrote page after page of illegible scrawl, allowing myself to spell out exactly why my ‘crime’ was so horrific. The lack of logic was irrelevant, and even my own growing sense of compassion for myself was not enough to stem the tide of fear and shame.
Finally, I reached out to ToGetHer Further, my last resort, even though I created it originally for my own benefit, I now feel a sense of duty to my members, not to burden them with my woes. But I suppose when it’s painful enough I find a way to let go, and let them help me however they can. And with the first response, the first genuine, wholehearted dose of empathy, my anxiety melted and the tears came. That virtual hug was all I needed to let go of the shame, and return to myself.
With each sobbing breath, I felt myself becoming more grounded, the cathartic release of emotion allowing me to finally become calm. Essentially, I became balanced again, but I never really seem to notice balance — I only seem to realise when I’ve lost it, and then I fight like hell to get it back.
