I was lying on my sofa, one Friday evening when I realised it was no longer there – that feeling I had always carried. The bracing – the sense of worry and the anticipation of something bad happening. That strength I always leaned on to brace – was simply not there – and in that moment, I panicked.

I started thinking back on the day and in-fact the week as a whole – and I could not find the fear – my trusted motivator. I’d had a lot done that week and accomplished some goals – but it was not the known fear that had pushed me.

It was later while I was sat at my dining table journaling that I could write down one word that described how I was feeling on the sofa. Untethered. 

At my dining table, as I wrote in my jade green journal, there was a certain softness in my posture I had never recognised in me. An ease almost – the tension that had forever been in my shoulders, the tenseness in jaw – they were not as pronounced as they had always been.

I had clarity in my thought and feelings – it was like I was looking at my life differently. 

There was this certain comfort in self pity when I reflected on the past that fed a part of me – almost made me feel justified in some of the choices I had made to protect myself. However, in that moment, I knew I no longer wanted that justified feeling. The decisions hurt – full stop. I did not need to justify them.

The decisions hurt – full stop. I did not need to justify them.

The chase of the ache to remind me of what I had had to deal with was now not something I wanted. At the same time, I also felt the emptiness of where these feelings used to live and there was nothing replacing them. 

It felt like there was nothing solid underneath my feet.

I remember thinking  – have I healed too much? 

The question sounded ridiculous to me but I asked myself anyway. I had lived my life being vigilant, afraid, worried and braced for impact.

When I first went to therapy in 2020, after a big fallout with a family member, my biggest fear was that I would lose who I was. As I continued seeking therapy and doing the work, it became clear that who I knew to be me, was just a version built for survival.

So for years, I carried the fear of who I would find underneath all the personas I built over the years – what I never gave much thought to was who I would be when I started choosing myself.

So on that sofa, that Friday evening, a version of me appeared who was simply at ease and existing. And when that old fear started to surface about who I had become – the old anxiety was no longer there.

The strength I had carried all my life simply did not apply here – because I was carrying a different fatigue now. It was not the tiredness of needing to survive. 

What I was feeling in that moment was the quiet tiredness of anticipation for what I could not name or describe – because I did not know it.

The work of choosing oneself  may seem so insignificant at the start – I did not know how I got to where I was. But there I was on the sofa, no longer willing to choose others or what was done to me in abandonment of myself.

My life did not get fixed automatically because I started choosing myself – I mean just last week, when I was feeling untethered again, I was tempted to go back to people and behaviours I knew no longer served the person I was becoming.

While journaling at the dining table, I also noticed that when you have lived a life of survival for so long, you brace for impact even when there is no pending danger – and that requires a certain kind of strength. 

So in order to not be in a situation where I would feel helpless, I carried the strength of being a one woman brigade. I couldn’t rest because if my life fell apart – and my life had fallen apart more times than I was comfortable with, I needed to be able to hold myself up. I had learned that no one was coming.

So when I noticed on the sofa that I was not braced for impact – that there was nothing to worry about – I could not trust the calm. I wanted to reach for the past or the future – but I could not quite grasp it like I had always done.

That calm felt foreign – even dangerous to me in that moment.

That feeling of not quite knowing where I belonged in my life – a past that no longer served me and a future version I could not predict – was very unsettling. But perhaps that was not a problem for me to solve but a blueprint for the emerging me to build what would hold us truly and fully.

And that strength- the very one my mother praised in me – it was simply survival and to be honest, it was tiring. I was beginning to see that life can be calm and peaceful. I did not need to figure it all out. After surviving all my life, I deserved to rest, be calm, be at peace and also not have any direction at the same time. A weird feeling, but I was sure I’d figure my future out daily.

For most of my life if I noticed I didn’t have anything to worry about, I worried about not having something to worry about! 

However, I had learnt that choosing and being at home with yourself comes with a lot of discomfort and grief we simply cannot ignore. But I also know one thing for sure – the weight of the cost of living in survival or on autopilot cannot be compared to the calm I am beginning to feel within myself.

If you are reading this, then I know we are doing the inner work – and I want to encourage you – if you ever notice that certain behaviours, patterns, feelings or even people are no longer present in your life – and you happen to feel the calm and not the familiar anxiety, fear, ache or longing you have always felt – sit in the calm for a while.

Before you decide to cope by numbing, going back to what or who you have always known – sit with the uncomfortable calm for 5 minutes. Set a timer if you need to.

When the timer runs out ask yourself this one question – what if this discomfort is what I need to reach the calm of a regulated nervous system?

Between survival and coming home to yourself is an uncomfortable space that tests whether to go back to the you who fought to prove worthiness of simply being.

And if you are currently in this in-between and want a companion through this stage of coming home to yourself, I offer one to one mentoring on The Practice of Staying with Yourself. I will walk with you at this point in your journey as you make your way back home to yourself.