Some Words For When You Need To Feel Resettled
Start with an exhale. I know it feels like I’m about to lead a meditation, but I promise, I’m not. I just know that if you’re feeling unsettled, your breath was probably the first part of you that clenched. You started holding it in because maybe you thought it (or something else in your life) would run out. You can breathe once now and then again in a second.
The same thought can carry over to whatever else you’re struggling through in your life right now. We often don’t believe in our current self’s ability to make it through, but somehow we’re always so proud of how our past self navigated that one thing that one time before. Who you were then was an amateur compared to who you are now, so why don’t you trust?
If you need some help understanding what trust can look like, here are some examples.
It’s making yourself dinner because we don’t earn food with achievement in this house.
It’s lowering your shoulders because they won’t suddenly carry more or feel less heavy just because they’re by your ears.
It’s forgiving yourself for not replying to all the texts, all the emails, all the big questions that need answers, because tomorrow has more hours.
You feeling resettled doesn’t mean complete release, it’s simply an acceptance of who you are right now. You get to say out loud, “who I am in the middle of this anxious thought is so deserving of love and a healthy evening.”
The self-care space sometimes makes it feel like if you say, “I love you” to yourself too much you’re suddenly going to be too “soft,” but maybe you need to be soft enough for the ideas to flourish, soft enough for your stomach to be hungry again, soft enough for all of you to have an appetite for the next moment.
I find that when I’m feeling unsettled, my thoughts race and my cravings are rooted in mostly destructive behaviors, like maybe I won’t do the one thing I can do on my to do list because then I have something to distract me from the real thing that’s bothering me. Feeling unsettled isn’t as much a red flag as it is a yield sign. Slow down, ask yourself what’s really bothering you, and don’t settle for the superficial answer you’d give to the version of yourself you were when you first started reading this. You’re different now, you took a deep breath, you unclenched your shoulders, you’re breathing again right now. You’re not scarcity or at risk of being extinct.
You’re resettled, now feel.