“Life has more imagination than we do…”
We each live in a dynamic and ever-changing universe while our bodies and minds yearn for constancy…security… equilibrium.
The biological process of homeostasis helps us keep our balance, by making small imperceptible adjustments so that we can focus on what’s in front of us and function effectively.
It’s ironic that this friendly biological process does such a good job of keeping us on track, that psychologically we begin to generate illusions about our ability to control our worlds. And we get invested in our illusions and cling to them, tenaciously. We want things to remain unchanged.
Life, on the other hand, keeps on pitching. It tosses us balls we never even imagined catching and asks us to respond to circumstances that weren’t our idea in the first place.
If we have a good track record of responding to the demands life makes on us, then we go confidently into everyday chaos and regulate accordingly. We’re just fine.
But, sometimes this modification process goes awry and for many good reasons. We run out of energy. There are too many separate calls from the people and things around us. We feel confused and stymied. Our systems jam. We feel the need to prioritize, but everything seems equally important. Besides, we just don’t even have the time to think about it.
If we have something to do, produce, or create, or if we need to sit down and concentrate in order to fulfill an obligation to others or to ourselves, our ability to do will definitely be compromised. We may even think we have adult attention deficit disorder.
Easy to understand how all of these multiple and simultaneous demands can cause a threat to our nervous systems, evoking fretfulness and making us feel stressed and incomplete. Too much of this kind of agitation and our daily state becomes one of anxiety as opposed to ease. And then all kinds of ripples issue into our world, touching everyone and everything around us.
It’s important to note that living in a state of physical and psychological anxiety for a protracted period of time can actually cause depression. Once again, our noticing of this phenomenon is often buried many layers under all the things we have to do. It’s actually unconscious. But whether we recognize it or not, the stress of all that unresolved business is using up energy just like the electric meter on your home ticks away as you use lights and appliances. Prolonged anxiety uses you up!
In other words, your energy is being drained, which means that the intricate chemical equation that balances mood begins to overcompensate as best it can. And that can result in feelings of free floating anxiety as well as nagging negativity, disillusionment and eventually depression.
Reflexively, we may reach for things that might help out in a pinch, but long term cause problems of their own. These things are called addictions and have their own story. . . and paths to recovery.
Conscious contemplation can help. If we can stop long enough to sort through our internal state of affairs, we can identify these stressors and begin to prioritize their resolution so that we might return to equilibrium.
Talking with Dr. Andrea Gould provides that opportunity in a safe atmosphere of caring and focus. From the place of relaxed intentionality, and the process of illuminating wise alternatives, we can free ourselves from past habits and patterns that no longer work for us. We can right ourselves and move on.
