Are you actually, too aroused?
Why couldn’t I have caught COVID in my 20s?
When I was dating men with narcissistic tendencies,
Or those who let me drive 2 hours for a date with them AND let me pay for dinner,
Or that one who argued with me about ‘equalism’ on our second date,
Awkwardly that was when I was 35 but let’s move on,
Why couldn’t it have ruined my taste then?
Sorry for my silence last week,
But after attempting only 3 emails and receiving 2 error message replies,
I realised sending 7000 people an email in my usual non-filtered way
Could have ended in somewhat of a disaster,
For me or my exes,
Let alone my reputation as someone who sometimes,
Occasionally,
Has their shit together.
This was the first time I’ve been sick in a while,
Since the classic case of dengue fever in 2021,
Mosquitoes are more brutal than bats FYI,
And I realised it gave me a huge opportunity.
An opportunity to rest,
To listen to my body,
Care for her like I would a parent for their child,
To nurse her back to health.
Point number one from today,
Parent your body.
She is your sole responsibility,
Yet many of you inhabit the role of school bully with the way you treat her,
Feel this internal drive to make her life hell when she has done truly nothing to you but give you life.
Why you are so hell-bent on making her life a misery?
I also realised that COVID knocked me out my window of tolerance,
Which if you don’t know,
Describes the best state of 'arousal' or stimulation in which we are able to function,
To thrive in everyday life.
It looks like this.
If you’re in the window of tolerance,
You can manage emotional well,
React to stress in a relatively chill way,
You feel connected to yourself, your emotions, your body.
Many of you,
You’re living in this state of hyperarousal,
The fight or flight response,
Where you’re emotionally distressed,
Always feeling rushed, anxious and overwhelmed,
And eating and exercising in a way that mirrors that,
Irregularly, quickly, in response to fluctuations in emotions,
Overeating to suppress your feelings,
Stress-eating,
Doing god knows how many steps and training sessions per week,
Feeling relaxation-induced anxiety when you stop,
Simply not stopping...
Others?
You’re living in the state of hypo-arousal,
The freeze zone,
You feel generally numb,
You’re lethargic and lack excitement or joy for much,
And eating and exercising in a way that mirrors that,
Overeating to give you a dopamine hit of happiness that you feel from nowhere else,
No desire to exercise or move,
Generally not taking care of your body.
A lot of the work we do at ETPHD coaching is about bringing you back to living in your window of tolerance,
With mindfulness, grounding, gratitude, somatics and regularity in eating and training,
And expanding your window of tolerance,
So you can do more with your life and stay regulated,
Without the need for 10 coffees a day,
A resting heart rate of 100bpm,
The inability to rest or take a day off,
Or indeed,
The inability to get motivated to go to the gym in the first place,
Either way leading to you using food as your sole coping mechanism,
If you relate,
Consider,
How can you soothe yourself down from hyper-arousal?
Or behaviour change your way out of hypo-arousal?
What coping strategies do you have to keep yourself in the healthy window of tolerance?
Because as a real treat,
Often you'll fluctuate between these two states,
Sometimes feeling super motivated, regimented, super 'on it',
Other times lethargic, overeating and lacking motivation to do anything,
Feeling like a 'failure'.
It’s quite the chaotic scene,
Much like said 20 something narcissist of my past,
But when you find yourself peacefully in the window of tolerance,
Your dysfunctional eating and exercise tend to follow.
