The warring parts of ourselves

Desperately seeking balance

This past week we haven’t got the balance right. We’ve been out and done lots of exciting things and we’ve socialised more than normal. It’s affected my son in particular who has had elevated levels of anxiety as a result. I call it the ‘fall out’. I’m cross with myself as I should know better than to pack so much into a week but at the same time, we are all getting increasingly frustrated by the long quiet days at home. The sibling arguments increase, the cries of boredom are more, the feeling of life passing us by wafts around us and we are all left struggling to figure out what our bodies actually need to feel peace and contentment.

I see my son desperately wanting lots of excitement in life, high dopamine activities, being out doing things every day, seeing lots of people. but then I see him burnout and the distress explode out when we are ensconced in the safety of home. I see my distress come out too in quiet tears or the glass of wine I don’t need. Sometimes watching my son is like looking in a mirror.

I’ve always been at odds, from an early age I wanted to sing, I wanted to play a role, I wanted to be on stage performing music that moved people. I wanted to entertain and make people laugh. But when on that stage I would freeze from nerves, and I’d become a wooden puppet and not something people could connect with at all. The meaning of the music lost in my anxiety. Quite simply I love to sing and write songs, but I struggle to perform. And this is just one example of the various parts of myself that war with one another. I love parties but struggle to socialise. I love to have quiet time but don’t know how to be alone. I want connection but I also want space. So hence I’ve landed in my 40’s without the clarity that some have gained at this stage in life. But I feel it’s coming. I feel that in learning who my son is I’m learning who I am. I feel as though we are on a journey together. Figuring out a life that fits. And to do that I need to create space. To have a clear out, to start again, a clean slate if you will. I need to start paying attention to my body and really, really listen to when it feels good, and when it doesn’t. To notice the muscles, tighten and the jaw clench and to notice when they loosen again.

It’s only recently that I have realised that I am struggling in the world as much as my son, that I too mask heavily around others to my detriment. That when socialising for even short periods I feel my body tire. But rather than leaving a social gathering early I find ways to keep myself there for fear of missing out, for fear of becoming invisible to the world if I’m not in the centre of it all the time. Fear of being judged for being rude if I say no. Sometimes I don’t even know the root cause of the fear, I just know it rumbles deep inside and it’s causing me deep confusion in my attempts to live an authentic life. Part of me wants a quiet life and part of me wants to be busy and social, my body is pulled in two separate ways, when I have one thing I want the other. A war wages inside. Perhaps this is me trying to be someone I’m not in the hope I’ll fit in or perhaps this is a mix of different neurotypes working at loggerheads with one another. I’m not quite sure. The more I learn about my son’s neurodivergence I suspect it could be the latter or after years of masking maybe a mix of both. I also wonder if our fluctuating capacity plays a part. My husband and I keep saying to one another, ‘No wonder we’re so tired,’ as we remind one another that as a family we are coming out the other side of burnout and that could be key as to why we struggle to keep up the same level of energy for life as others appear to do.

There are so many reasons why there are various parts of us that contradict each other. And that’s the challenge, sifting through the layers to work out who we really are. Teasing out the bits of ourselves and creating neat piles of past trauma, health and neurotype. I feel a calling to figure it out because I need to show my children how it’s done, how to discover who we really are and meet our needs in healthy and authentic ways. I can’t do that if I continually put myself in situations where I have to mask and I resort to coping mechanisms, like alcohol, to get myself through. I need to show my children how to care for themselves by taking care of myself. We both need to learn how to take the mask off, to allow our bodies more time to step out of hyper vigilance and feel safe in the world in which we exist. We need to find a way for our warring parts to work more harmoniously together.

At this juncture I am excited that our bodies are now showing, with clarity, what doesn’t work but also terrified of what we need to let go of in order to find the right balance. But we will do this together, my daughter and husband too. We will find our way. I feel a new chapter awaits us all.