Cracking Under Pressure
Your body will always make it know when you're putting yourself under too much pressure - as mine did recently.
I was putting myself under so much pressure in fact that I had a hemiplegic migraine - for the first time in my life.
If you’ve ever had one, you’ll know how scary it is. I woke up at 05.30 one morning a couple of weeks ago with my right arm useless. Hand unable to grip. Shoulder burning and tingling and a vague numbness in the right side of my lips and mouth.
All more serious illnesses were ruled out by medical professionals thankfully, and I got to work with looking at it through the lens of META-health. (And resting, of course).
Ah. The Lightbulb Moment.
“Where are you placing yourself under enormous stress and pressure?”
“Did you experience a great deal of pressure and high expectations in childhood?”
Yep. That old chestnut. The pattern of pressure that has at it’s root, the belief that I am not good enough (more in that in another post) and that I am somehow failing at life.
When I look at this through a holistic lens I see relevance also to the fact it was the right side of my body.
Right = masculine (according to Indian yogic traditions). The active, outward, achieving, doing energy. The energy of father, boss, and work.
As a 47-year old woman progressing more deeply into her menopause journey, my body is calling for more feminine. More being. Slowing down. Doing less. Being more inwards. This is an energy I have aways found it hard to embody – yet I can now see how I have been at odds with myself by resisting it. In opposition to my natural rhythm, cycles, and phase of life.
Whilst I am self-employed and therefore my own boss, she is, in fact a bit of a slave driver! My achievements in any given day are never quite enough.
Well, I’ve had words with her this week, that boss of mine! And I’ve signed myself off sick for a few days, with the clear message that when I return to work, things need to change! A balance of being and doing is needed. More listening. Less pushing.
I need a much more spacious working day and environment than I used to. One that allows me time in nature, and time to breathe and rest. That's how I can also best support my clients. By giving myself more of what I need, I have more capacity to compassionately guide my clients. Where can you apply this in your life?
For the week of recovery I well and truly dropped the bundle. I’m writing this from the comfort of my bed. Sipping ginger and honey tea and watching the rain come down.
I’m an advocate of (and even teach) listening to the body. But sometimes it has to shout before we can hear it. Or at least that’s true for me at times. (We teach what we need to learn, right?)
I’m wondering how much of the pressure I felt as a child was real or perceived. Did my highly sensitive nature magnify it somehow? In a way that doesn’t matter – the fact is, my body felt it and it’s time I honoured her experience.
The pressure to please, meet expectations, always behave in a certain way, do as I was told, be the emotional buffer for my Mum in her times of distress. The pressure to do well at school, be ambitious, learn all the things and achieve – it became pressure I internalized and placed on myself. It became my inner narrative. Until now.
It’s all around us too – in our society. The extrovert ideal (as spoken about extensively in the book “Quiet” by Susan Cain) and the modern day pressures to have more, be more, do more and achieve faster - it is, in my opinion, toxic and I’m declaring now: I'm done with it. Will you join me?!
It’s placing us and our beautiful planet under a huge amount of strain and she’s creaking at the seams, on the verge of collapse - just like many people trying to keep up with the world.
The reality is it can’t continue. We can’t drain ourselves and our planet of all resources and expect to come out unscathed. The reality will be quite the opposite.
So what do we do?
One decision at a time, one day at a time, one cycle at a time – we notice the pressure and the push. We breathe. We let it go, and we re-define our new measures of success. What will yours be?
We create success that’s more aligned with the truth of who we are, as individuals and beings of the natural world, with our own unique energy, rhythms and cycles, but also interdependent on one another not just for our survival – but for us to thrive, too. Both people and planet.
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