A quiet mind, for a change.

The past few weeks have been crazy! Nothing extraordinary has happened, or maybe it has and my memory is terrible, but its been so busy.  I have noticed a change though. A pleasant one I think, but for a change my mind has been quiet. I cant tell if its because I do less overthinking, or I am just not thinking at all. Either way its rather nice.

We have been able to enjoy bike runs, days out swimming and even playing with bugs.  I had a few days of losing my mind as I was planning my eldest sons birthday party. I really was willing myself to stop thinking about what would go wrong, and came to the conclusion that either way, I had done as much as I could to prevent any issues and if something did happen then we would cross that bridge when it came to it.  Strangely enough this only happened the morning of the party and I had gave myself a chest infection by this point. 

Anyway the party went on without much bother at all and all the kids had a great time! I cant complain at all and my kid had a fabulous birthday, he felt extremely loved and had an opportunity to bring all of his chums together. I did however fail on a tradition of baking the birthday cake. My mum offered and thankfully she did as I was too wrecked to do anything. It was a lovely gesture which I really appreciated, however couldn’t eat the cake, Im sorry mum, but you will never make a vegan out of me. 

Unfortunately for my partner, his birthday is a few days after my sons and we always focus everything on the kids, so he always gets forgotten. This year we remembered to get him shower gel and deodorant. Luckily he knows hes got it good living with us and we are gift enough and if he doesn’t know that he will now.  (or maybe in 5 years time if he finally reads this)

He is fabulous and we do appreciate him, just not at conventional times. The million long lies and random party cannon wake up calls are all that he needs to keep him happy I think. 

Anyway, life has been busy and spending snippets of it with some amazing people is what has made life so shiny. I got a take-away with a friend the other night and we literally ate food and said goodnight. It was all we had energy for, but was exactly what we needed. Luckily I have so many forgiving friends who just know whats required from either side and it works. My Gran is pretty handy in this area too. I know I mention her often, but she deserves it.

She is one fabulous woman and shows me most days where chunks of my personality came from. She kept a greenhouse in her bedroom until the weather got warm enough to sustain her plants outdoors and quite often does things that others would never imagine doing. Mostly because they would be worried of how it would look or what someone would think, but how could you not consider something if it solved a problem?  regardless of what others thought. Her current favorite phrase ” and if you were chocolate you’d eat yourself” reminding others of how fabulous they are too.

This carefree aspect of not worrying what others think has most definitely originated from my grandparents. In fact this shines through so much so that my mum recalls of a time where she had went to a place called Springside. Now this is about 4 hours from where we live now and she really didn’t imagine bumping into anyone she knew. She was about to go into a shop and was taken aback by a sheep in a jeep. Just chilling in the back of a jeep outside the local spar. Now she knew only one man who would do this, but my papa lived 4 hours away, it surely wouldn’t be him. Yet here it was, the sheep in jeep and my papa strolling out the shop. How else would he have gotten it home? 

Recently ive read a little (like a minuit amount) about nervous system dysregulation and have been beyond intruiged. It is essentially, clinical symptoms that happen after long periods of stress or repeated activation of anxiety. So for example I imagine this would regularly be when you are in a high stress job, like life or death or anything that may cause PTSD.  Random bouts of trauma don’t often cause this, however given the past 2 years we have all been exposed to, then I imagine there would be higher rates of this happening to people. As far as I believe its the response to trauma or intense situations that would essentially cause this. So most of us could live reacting poorly or being triggered by things in life and not often notice, as long as the events are spaced far enough apart we are fine. However when you are consistently exposed to things that trigger you to have automatic thoughts and behaviors too often, your nervous system suffers. 

So also to do with this is the window of tolerance. Which links exactly with what I described just now. Im going to draw what I understand this as..

Red Line = life   Black lines= your window of tolerance (everyones is different also)

So the red line being life and its up and downs, going fine and staying within your areas of coping. An event puts you outwith the window, and then you get back on track, but then something puts you over the line again, and again and then finally you no longer know where the boundaries sit and you live out of this marker all the time, or most of the time.

Outside your window of tolerance sends you into fight or flight mode. Now spending too much time outwith these boundaries (not always through personal choice, external factors contribute to this) can often spike regular reactions to immediately go outwith these boundaries even if it normally wouldn’t cause this reaction.

If you don’t know someone who hasn’t developed some form of mental health issue in the past few years, then id say you maybe arent talking enough or you have some pretty sorted out mates. 

Either way, this is a really simple way I think to describe how things can manifest by sheer accident and then take over your life. I really hope ive described it right, or even have an idea of how it all works, if I don’t, please dis-regard all this and correct me please. 

And if I didn’t bore you to sleep, theres a little more ( changing your automatic response to things can alter your tollerance, or more so bring you back within tollerance?) but thats for another night when im not up at 6am. 

goodnight, and thank you for reading if you made it to the end. Blame my dad, I enjoyed a lat night phonecall with him doing his best darth vader impresion.  (love you too)

Final note: I learned a new interesting word; Agnosthesia- The state of not knowing how you truly feel about something. You look for clues hidden in your behaviour to help you find your feelings or opinion.