I’m taking a break from journaling every morning. Which is hard, because journaling is how I make sense of all my emotions and my past trauma.
But I’m running into this strange phenomenon:
I’m digging up more past than the amount my nervous system is able to process.
Every time I journal, it opens emotional wounds…
And some of those wounds run 20 or 30 years deep.
Some of them go further than that, all the way back to early childhood.
And some are much more recent — but still feel really intense, when exposed to the present moment.
For a couple of years now, I’ve been journaling and crying almost every morning.
And I don’t like to admit it, but I think the crying has gotten out of control.
I mean, I can tolerate it. It’s not enough, on its own, to send me back into the hospital, or to prevent me from fulfilling my obligations each day to go to outpatient therapy and otherwise keep myself alive and well.
In fact, in a lot of ways, I really love crying every morning. Probably because for so many years, I didn’t think it was allowed. And now I’m experiencing all of the healing qualities of having a good cry, and letting everything out and leaving it all behind me.
But lately, I’m noticing that the more I journal, the longer my crying spells last, and the deeper the tidal waves that wash over me when I cry…
And I’m kinda wondering if maybe I’m taking on too much? Maybe I’m trying to process more than I’m actually capable of? More than is truly healthy for me?
Like I said, it’s not keeping me from living life.
But sometimes it huuuuuuuuuurts so much. And I start to feel like no matter how much I get out, it’ll never add up to how much I keep digging up. Like if I cry ten bucketfuls in one morning… journaling might “dig up” another fifteen to twenty.
So when I’m constantly journaling — even though I’m crying throughout, and clearing away the debris — there’s always this never-ending backlog of, “Yeah, I’m doing great, but I haven’t got to all this yet!” And that makes it really hard sometimes to see that I am making progress.
And I need to see that I’m making progress, now and then. Or else what’s the point of all this deep inner work?
So, this month I’ve been allowing myself to cry every morning, when I need to… and I’ve been intentionally not journaling at all… and it’s hard, because I’m growing and learning so much in outpatient, and the reporter in me feels like, “We need a written record of this transformation! This is such valuable data!”
But I just can’t do it.
I don’t want to do it, right now.
I don’t want to push myself harder than I’m ready to go.
My nervous system doesn’t like it.
And honestly? I don’t have to move at lightning speed.
I don’t have to kill myself trying to save myself (which, realistically, is what I’ve been doing, whether I want to admit it or not).
I’ve already figured out that I’m in a safe, healing environment. My finances are set. I don’t have to worry about unexpected bills or medical problems.
I can survive just fine with what I’ve currently got. I don’t need to rush to add anything new into my life, or make any drastic, dramatic changes.
I can just… relax… and allow my nervous system to tell me what pace is safe for me, going forward.
Which feels like a cheat code, in today’s society.
But you know what? I’m taking it.
Why try to push myself to achieve that much more, when I know for a fact that I don’t have to?
It doesn’t make any logical sense.