The Slowdown: We Say We Want It, But What Happens When We Do?

We often talk about the need or desire to slow down when we feel like we are doing too much. We feel the pull to step out of the race we didn’t know we signed, but what happens when we do?

A few years ago I was looking to shift my business goals and focus more on writing and less direct work with clients in my private practice.

I couldn’t wait for things to slow down. My personal and professional responsibilities seemed to take up every moment of my day and I wanted more time for myself. If I knew how many moments there were to count before I got there, I would have counted them.

The compromises played out on repeat.

“After this, I’ll be good.

When this happens, I’ll slow down.

I just gotta get through this and then I will be able to breathe.”

One of two things generally happens next- either the slow down is avoided as other distractions fill the potential space or once the slow down begins, our bodies and minds which are easily accustomed to the ongoing stress, begin to create new stressors and distractions to avoid the feelings that come with the slow down.

Why?

Because the slow down is hard. We say we want it until we become so used to the adrenaline high and crash of stress we don’t know who we are without it.

I started asking myself questions I had never considered…

If I’m not actively doing something, who am I? What’s my value? What’s my purpose? What do I bring to the table?

I didn’t know if I wanted a break from activity as much as I wanted a break from the expectations.

The expectation that I have to prove something, like my value. Or the expectation that I have to earn free time with no responsibility, or doing things I genuinely enjoy.

During my slow down, I began to see the cracks of where my energy was seeping out. The time I spent trying to build something outside of me instead of focus on the instability inside of me.

I know that sounds a bit cliche, but it was true. I looked for ways to maintain my energy from feeling needed from others. As I began to have less distractions I could see that I was incredibly uncomfortable without all the inner buzz asking me to stay on top of my responsibility. The Should’s were super loud.

“Well now that you have time you SHOULD dig in and start writing. You have space so you SHOULD fill it with all the things you didn’t have room for before. You SHOULD move your body everyday and eat well and meditate more deeply and have all the answers to what you are doing next by…the end of the day today. Get on it.

Oh also, you SHOULD be having more fun and feeling fully content.”

But instead, I froze. And felt drained…just by expectation alone.

I didn’t want to push. I didn’t want to hustle. I wanted to rest and learn what relaxed felt like.

When you are living in fight or flight for so long, the let down and “healing” phase feels completely unfamiliar. When you spend most of your time scanning for threat and a problem to solve it becomes an instinct and lasts well after the threat has left. The system becomes addicted to the adrenaline and protecting itself so when the threat is not there, it will create one just to feel “normal.”

I imagine this is what people who retire must feel like. Or when someone is suffering from an experience or illness that forces you to slow down.

All the stuff that was avoided before now has the space to remind you it’s still there. And this time, it’s not letting you close your eyes. In fact, it may even make your eyes stay open all night wondering what the hell is happening with all these weird feelings coming up.

I can see now it’s a detox of sorts. Letting the feelings come up and the habitual fear thoughts who were quietly running the show reveal themselves with a more forceful approach.

The irony? I teach this. I see it in other people so clearly, but in myself, it felt like I was stranded in crazy town with no ride or exit out.

So what did I do? I cried a lot. And read books I was drawn to. And took a lot of naps. I looked for distractions to fill the space but there weren’t any I even had the energy for.

I was tired. And sad. And lonely. And all the yucky things I avoided for a long time because those feelings were not “productive” and there was no space for them to get shit done.

As I said to a friend, sadness makes me feel helpless, whereas anxiety motivates me, yet makes me impulsive. I was on my way towards the middle but I felt no patience around it. I had no blueprint or map on where I was going or what to expect.

I was no longer sinking but I was not comfortable riding the waves either.

What did I used to say all the time? Oh yes- Go with the Flow.

Yet going with the flow is hard when you lost your faith in the middle of it.

And that’s where I landed in the middle of the slow down. Faithless, lost, and having no idea how or if I’d find my way out.

I don’t know at what point I recognized I needed more help, I just knew I did.

A mental health therapist myself, I’d never had much luck with therapy. I rarely lasted long with talk therapy because I could process my own experience and patterns quickly and didn’t leave my therapist with much room to help me. I knew I’d have to try something different and I was ready.

I didn’t need help seeing my patterns, I needed help feeling and moving through the resistance that came with changing them.

I invited in a tour guide (my first somatic based therapist) to help me go into the depths of myself and find my way out a bit less beat up.

This is where I learned how many injured parts lived inside me and the ways they were showing up. Life hasn’t been the same since, and for that I am grateful.

The more I look and feel what’s inside me the more I can see the ways my life outside me both reflects and challenges my injuries. And the more I see, the more I can make new choices to change and enhance my life.

The deeper I dive into this work the more there seems to be to explore and reveal. I am both fearful and fascinated by what I continue to find. And that is how I know I am on the right path for me.

What Are Your Really Scared Of?

When I tell the story of my life path and how I ended up where I seem to be, I most often start with life with my mother.

A beautiful, sensitive spirit, her 41 years of life was a rollercoaster of joy and pain, like most of us, yet from the majority of the memories I can recall, not an enviable one.

When I was nine months old she displayed some odd behaviors, namely trying to make my brother and I throw up believing we would die if we didn’t. This landed her in the hospital for a month to assess what was “wrong” with her.

Several medications and observations later she was sent home with a diagnosis of mental illness. A few different variations but ultimately she was ushered into the box of bipolar disorder…or in those days, Manic Depression.

She would spend the next 14 years trying to find the cure to her manic highs and debilitating lows. She just wanted to feel better, or at least not worse. She searched for answers, prayed, took the advice given, then scrapped the advice given and tried to exist without wanting to die on a regular basis.

Any chance of having a present and nurturing mother was gone before I could walk or say words. My childhood was one of parentification and neglect. Of soothing my mother’s big needs or being on alert for the next blowup, breakdown or suicide intervention. She referred to me as her “little psychiatrist.” She relied on my words and comfort during her darkest of times and I felt compelled to be that support for her. I didn’t want her to leave again.

Days before my fifteenth birthday, she ended her life by suicide. Took over 100 of the pills prescribed to save her life. My job as her caretaker ended, but my new career of becoming a healer for others was just beginning.

At some point, very early after her death, I promised myself I would use the horrible experience I encountered for good. I would find a way to serve others with what I learned. That promise was one I kept. I became a professional counselor and later a master energy therapist. I authored a work-ing book and guide to connect us to ourselves. And another book for children, and those that read to them, with a heartfelt reminder that love never dies.

My passion and gift, it seems, is to seek and find the good in the devastation. The elixir in the pain. And the faith in the fear.

And while all of that is true, and the motivation has been a propelling force since I was young, what I did not know and realize is how the trauma of my childhood affected me. The level of dysregulation in my nervous system, the chronic stress I would accumulate, and how the untamed drive that pushed me to “do good” was also what caused me to burn out and self sabotage.

It would be many years later I would understand the root of my anxiety, the way the parts of me split and overcompensated under stress, the injuries that went ignored inside my psyche and the grief that was delayed because it felt like “too much.”

I spent my lifetime focusing on others needs abandoning my own by default. Partly out of love and partly out of fear.

For the past ten years I’ve been learning to discern which voice is leading the show. And now I’m ready to write and share more about my journey.

As I share my inner world you may see parts of yourself, your patterns, your motives, and your pain points. In fact, I hope you do.

After working with the inner worlds of others for the entirety of my career, I know none of us are alone.

Welcome to the unraveling, one fear at a time.