It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post. I haven’t really had a whole lot to say – I’ve been healing myself for the last few months. I mean that both physically and spiritually. My body decided it’s time to take a break. This will be the first time I’m really talking about this, but I was diagnosed with POTS in January. Don’t know what that is? Don’t worry, I didn’t when the cardiologist first told me about it either. It’s Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome: (POTS) is one of a group of disorders that have orthostatic intolerance (OI) as their primary symptom. OI is a condition in which an excessively reduced volume of blood returns to the heart after an individual stands up from a lying down position. That’s per our good friend google. Some of the symptoms include lightheadedness (occasionally with fainting), difficulty thinking and concentrating (brain fog), fatigue, intolerance of exercise, headache, blurry vision, palpitations, tremors and nausea. I found out about this after I dealt with having RSV right before Christmas time. When I think back, I’m sure I’ve had this for a while. For the last 6 months or so I’ve been so excessively tired and had trouble going up the stairs without my heart feeling like it’s going to beat out of my chest. I would be sitting for work and having heart palpitations. I’m only 39 & otherwise healthy. I thought this was a little off, but because I didn’t have anything major going on, pushed it to the side and kept going about my life.

What’s treatment for this? Beta blocker medicine to keep my heart rate lower since it skyrockets when I stand up or do any sort of consistent movement; light exercise when I can do it; drinking a shit ton of water. How the hell did I end up with it? Apparently, this is a condition that’s on the rise since COVID came out. I’ve had COVID 2-3 times in the last few years, so I believe I must have started this after my last time dealing with it. They caught it because while in the hospital for dehydration, they saw an irregular heartbeat on my EKG and sent me to the cardiologist. My heart is otherwise healthy – but when doing a stress test after I got off the treadmill, my blood pressure plummeted.

So that’s the physical diagnosis.

Emotionally & spiritually? I’m dealing with major heartbreak and not allowing myself to feel.

I talk about this a lot with my healing work, how important it is to honor and respect your feelings. Yet, I’ve had a hard time doing it myself over the last couple of months. My fight or flight response is to close myself off again once I’ve been really hurt. I think of it like a clam who shuts violently and you can’t get it open again. I took a deep dive recently into my own shadows again and realized that I close myself off when I don’t feel safe. I’ve had one person besides my husband that I trusted my safety with over the last few years. That person is no longer in my life right now. It was a major blow to my stability. Think of a table: one of the legs was kicked out and I’ve been trying to get the thing level ever since.

My ego has been saying, hasn’t it been long enough? Aren’t you over this yet? It’s trying to put this timeframe on something that has no time limit. I’ll be over it when I’m over it, when I’ve gone through the grief process and felt all the feelings that need to be felt. What’s currently delaying my process is this self-protection mode that I go into once I’ve been knocked down hard. I’ve done this since I’m a little girl. I refuse to let anyone see how badly I’m hurt, I won’t really cry and I’ll try to shake things off like they don’t matter. I can’t do that anymore. It’s literally making me physically sick. I feel like because I know better now, with all of the learning I’ve been doing in my energy work, it makes it impossible to just brush things off. It’s like that saying: once you know better, you must do better. So, I’ve felt stuck for a while, in this purgatory of protection and feeling. It’s made me realize that I’ve never really learned how to deal with the hard shit. It was easier to shove everything in a closet and keep that door barred shut. Now the closet has been opened and everything has fallen onto the floor, and I don’t even know where to start to clean everything up. (I can’t take credit for that analogy – my therapist gave me that beautiful perspective) Because this coping mechanism is something I developed so young, there are things that came out of that closet that I haven’t looked at in a long time. So, in a way, I feel like I’ve been working through another dark night of the soul. Finding and relearning myself again. Who am I? What is it I want from life? What am I here to do? If you’re into energy work, you know the chakra system. I’ve been going through each of them again, one by one and clearing out what needs to be released. Some of the shit that’s been coming up are things that I haven’t thought about in decades. My body will physically tense up just thinking about some of them. Sometimes a traumatic event will be so disturbing that your body and mind will literally shut off and make you forget it even happened. Once you’ve done enough healing work, your brain will decide that it’s now safe to remember. Some of the things make me want to go back to sleep, but that’s not really an option. While I could bury my head in the sand if I wanted to again, that’s not what I really want. Instead, piece by piece I have started picking up the garbage that came out of the closet. I’m deciding if it’s something that needs to get put back neatly or if it’s really garbage and can be discarded. It sounds like a pretty process when you break it down that way, but it’s actually quite messy.

You may be asking, why deal? Why not just throw it all in the garbage and move on with your life? I could do that. But then I would still live in the same patterns, not feel my feelings and most likely end up more sick as time goes on. I don’t want that. I don’t want my kids to do the same. I want to break these shitty cycles that have been in my family for generations. The only way to do that is to feel, be honest about it and just be.

I am awake. I am a cycle breaker. That is by no means an easy path, but the one I chose. So, I will continue to do the work.

For all of you out there, who have a hard time feeling, I see you. It’s so incredibly hard to accept yourself just as you are and to just be. The world has so many distractions, most of which are designed to make you further hate yourself and pass judgment. I invite you all to take the time to just sit with yourself. In silence. Without any distractions. Listen to what your body is trying to tell you. Chest pains? Check in with your heart. Trouble with your stomach? Check in with your confidence and self-esteem. Take the time to really listen to what comes up. That’s the only way you’ll really heal and put the pain to bed. Do yourself a favor and don’t put a time limit on your healing or grieving process either. Just know it will pass once you’ve processed everything you need to.

I say this as someone who’s going through it, so I know what I’m talking about.

Always love,

T