An Awakening Experience

Have you ever experienced what Irvin Yalom calls “an awakening experience” - when you realize you are not really living? Have you ever woken from a dream state to see that you are just going through the motions? That your life is on autopilot? That you checked out somewhere along the way?

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The COVID Pandemic Reality of Living

As I shuffled into lockdown with the rest of the world, the disruption from the normal routine woke me from my personal slumber and ushered me into my own awakening experience. I had just opened my private practice six months prior, and I will still fleshing out how to get patient referrals, build a network, create stability and rhythm. With the pandemic, I was forced to switch to virtual therapy, with essentially one day’s notice. I quickly picked a telemedicine platform that provided video chatting and informed all my patients of the change. Several patients cancelled their appointments; they did not want virtual therapy. In those early days, we all thought it would be a temporary change. Little did I know that it would be three years before I returned to in-person visits again.

Being a therapist during the pandemic was challenging, to put it mildly. My patients were stressed. They could not find toilet paper and basic ingredients for their meals. They were being sent home from their jobs to work remotely while their children virtually attended school. They had to create makeshift offices and quickly order furniture (only to find that it was backordered due to cargo shipping delays). They could not travel or eat at a restaurant. The ways they usually coped with stress had been stripped away.

In my own life, I was exhausted on every level. Between cooking two meals a day (sometimes three), working longer hours than usual, and having no “off” switch, I was inching closer to burnout. As I watched all my vacations get cancelled one by one, I realized I would need to develop some other ways to self-care.

The Freeze Trauma Response

The word “stress” does not really capture what those months were like. I found myself frequently in a freeze response. I did not know what to do with myself. I was overwhelmed by the therapy sessions with my patients, and when I was done, I did not know what to do with my free time. Do I watch more terrifying news? Do I take a drive with no place to go? So...I baked breads along with the rest of the world. I did jigsaw puzzles on my dining room table. I binge watched movies with my husband. I did all the things I could. But the freeze response lingered in my body. The underlying angst was still there, occupying my thoughts during the day and haunting my dreams at night. I was traumatized, and the collective experience of the pandemic was paralyzing. Not having enough distance between my own distress and my patients’ distress. We were all experiencing the same problems and threatening events at the same time. Meanwhile, I felt like I was expected to have it “all together” when I showed up as the therapist. It was an impossible task.

Burnout

As my burnout increased, I spent more time in my own therapy talking about my experience. With the help of my therapist, I began to see my work patterns. The patterns that had largely been hidden from my sight until the world fell apart. Now, I could see how accommodating I was. I could see how I was over-working and being over-responsible.

One pattern is I would flex my schedule to meet the needs of my clients. From the comfort of my own home and with nowhere to go, it seemed easy to meet clients at the times they needed. I made myself available. Much too available. I prided myself on being there for my clients, being stable and present. In the process though, I was ignoring whether this scheduling honored my constitution and temperament. Whether it respected my sensitivity. My burnout only increased, and now I was frozen and burned out, the worst combination. How do you move out of burnout when you are frozen?

As I searched for ways to replenish myself and heal my burnout, my awakening experience unfolded. Blinders shielding my field of vision were removed. I believed I had boundaries at work, but really I was people pleasing. My accommodating was an excuse. I did not want to fail in my business, so I was saying yes too often out of fear. Saying no to scheduling requests meant that patients might leave, but in saying yes, I was people pleasing and abandoning myself in those moments. As a result, I was growing resentful as I kept ignoring myself and focusing only on the needs of my patients. I learned that my default is to do what others expect of me while silencing my inner voice. Religion had taught me as a child that I cannot trust my self and that my inner desires are dangerous.

The awakening led me to see how much I was giving away. Giving not only my time but other parts of me as well. It was not just my work life that was affected by my people pleasing. I had a habit of going out of my way for other people who rarely reciprocated. Being over-responsible. Giving too much. The relationships worked as long as I continued that pattern, but it felt like a real relationship until I gave some of the responsibility back and the connection between us would begin to crack. People in my life were perfectly happy with my people pleasing and over-responsibility.

An Invitation To Another Way of Living

The awakening was a personally engraved invitation into a real world - no pretenses or mirages. I could see clearly my fawning behaviors. My auto-pilot tendencies and how checked out I was. It was no wonder, I was only focused on the needs of others and had deadened my own needs. The numbness I was tolerating while I worked diligently to make sure the needs of others were satisfied. I was going through the motions. I was on autopilot but confusing it for real living. I was tolerating too much and my tolerance was dwindling.

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How do you know when you are checked out? When you are just going through the motions and not really present in your own life? How do you know when you are on autopilot and someone else (or something else) has taken the wheel and is driving?

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Going Through The Motions

Going through the motions looked like hiding away my desires after experiencing disappointments. It looked like shelving my desires and playing it safe. When something I was hoping for didn’t work out, like a work promotion, I put the desires away and settled for living a smaller life. I settled for what was available rather than what I really wanted. In the process, my truest self was put in a corner and told to shut up.

Living on autopilot looked like quieting my inner self. Not listening to her. Ignoring her whispers. Rejecting her pleas. Not following her leading. Like deadening my intuition and living by someone else’s rules. My intuition was trying to talk but I had stopped listening. I was going along with what I was “supposed” to based on the world’s standard even though it did not work for me. I worked one horrible job after another in order to do the “right thing.” I let someone else have a bigger say than my own voice. I was living my life according to a set of “shoulds” I inherited that weren’t really mine.

Checked out looked like living small. Not taking up too much space. Not having too many needs. It looked like not using my voice, not speaking up. Staying small was staying safe and keeping quiet.

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The Changes I Made

Through my awakening, I knew I had to make changes. My life and my health were on the line.

I started listening to my body. It was speaking mostly through illness those days. I began paying attention. I allowed myself to rest even when I did not think I had earned it. I challenged the belief passed down to me from my workaholic parents that I had to deserve rest.

I created a schedule for work with myself in mind...when I was most focused, what days and times worked for me, and I stopped being so available. I created a structure and challenged myself to not work beyond that structure. I set a limit for the number of therapy sessions each day. No more marathon days. I began saying no and I stopped morphing my schedule to meet the needs of others. I began taking my capacity into consideration, and when my capacity shifted, I honored it. I stopped pushing past my limits.

I stopped being so pliable in my relationships. I no longer defaulted to what the other person wanted from me. Instead, I quieted myself and strained to listen to my intuition. Once I heard what she wanted, I spoke up for myself. I stopped defaulting to “yes” and instead I learned to get comfortable with “no.” I stopped agreeing to requests that transgressed my limits. I no longer went out of my way to maintain the non-reciprocal relationship.

I started taking up space and considering my own needs. I stopped giving all of myself away. I held on to what I needed. I braved the discomfort of someone else’s displeasure with me in order to hold on to more of myself. I asked for what I needed. I met my own needs. I let my own needs matter as much as everyone else’s.

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The Catalyst of the COVID Pandemic

Many people experienced awakenings during the pandemic. Did you? The atmosphere was ripe for self-discovery and self-reflection. We were confronted by a deadly virus killing tens of thousands of people each week. As we watched what transpired around the world, our own lives were upended with the disruption of switching to a virtual way of life. COVID provided an opportunity for soul-searching, an existential crisis on a global level.

What was your awakening experience? When did it happen for you? What were the circumstances? What parts of your self had been silenced? And what parts did you reclaim? Did you have tough choices to make?

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A Return to My Self

My awakening experience brought me back to myself.  Back to my intuition. To listening to my gut. To paying attention to my body. To inviting my hidden desires out into the light. To allowing softness and rest. To moving with ease rather than forcing things. To having more for myself rather than giving it all away to other people. To paying attention to what lights me up. To living beyond obligation and duty. To freedom and true ownership of my decisions. To embodied consent.

What are you inviting? Are you moving into something and away from something else? What are you paying attention to? What does embodied consent look like for you?