Feeling flat? Try this

Analysis Paralysis

 

Last week, I felt as flat as a sheet of plywood. All splintery and knotted with life. It was a deep blah feeling- a state that settled deep in my chest. I wasn’t depressed or anxious- just “flat”. I scoured my psyche for a reason but couldn’t pin it down.

My default pattern with tougher emotions is to find a definitive. A reason for why they’re there. Give me a dose of dread or despair and my spidey-sense goes up. I get all in my head, looking for and analyzing the tiniest of splinters. I want them out; I want relief.

So last week when I was feeling “flat” (tough because it was pervasive) I began search. Was it because I’d been working alone more recently? Had a restless night with three wake ups? A gnawing sense of dread about my aging body? The death of Navalny, the crisis of democracy (this does keep me up at night!)? Or was it my agony about the suffering in Gaza?

After a day of hapless inquiry, I decided to take myself (and Percy) for a walk. A dear friend had just reminded me of the song Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls– a Uni favorite of ours. I grabbed my headphones, found a new version of the song (Brandi C.) and headed for a place that mirrored my inner world.

The wide open, flat lake.

 

What emotions lie beneath “feeling flat”?

 

As we dipped down on the lake and picked up the snow-bike trail, Percy ran everywhere and I stuck to the path. Him in his black booties, me in my mukluks. Him carefree, me still flat. We curved round by the beaver dam, both of us sniffing (or scanning) for new caribou and wolf tracks. Overhead flew some ravens occasionally blocking the sun. Even with all this beauty, these usual suspects couldn’t alleviate my flatness.

As we walked through a stand of dead spruce, the song blaring, I caught the line, “the darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable and lightness has a call that’s hard to hear”. I stopped walking and turned towards the truth of my feeling. Tucked under a canopy of lichen, I fell to my knees and burst into tears.

I sobbed for another Closer to Fine (it was the 6th round by this point). Four full minutes of grief- for the world, for Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and my agony of not being able to alleviate any suffering. I’m not sure how much grief poured out in four minutes but it felt like a broken dam at at the headwaters.

When I finally got up, the flatness was gone and there was snot on my mitts. I looked down where I knelt. The snow had changed shape- like the site of an animal kill. It was clear there’d been a struggle. The struggle to meet and walk with my flatness. The struggle to feel fully. The struggle to discover what was hidden underneath the flat.

 

Drop into the body- you don’t need to hold it all

 

I share this story because working with tough emotions (however you define them) is essential to navigating the death (and rebirth) of systems and structures. Domination and oppression are a force field. And when we believe we can’t change or influence them to the degree we want- tough emotions can arise overtly or be hidden by something else.

In working with them, we each have our ‘go-to-moves’ to minimize or control how we feel. Mine is analysis. I like to pin down and dissect so I can make what disturbs me go away. This gives me a temporary illusion of safety but prolongs my suffering.

But over the last ten years, I’ve learned some new moves. The biggest one has been to trust sensation- or the innate wisdom of my body. My greatest mentors come from the more-than-human world. This lake (pictured above), the poplars, lichen and wide open skies. They remind me to drop the analysis. To forget the definitive. They teach me that I don’t have to hold it all.

When I decide to express (and not contain) what I’m feeling, I’ve learned that what troubles me tends to dissipate. Last week, my tears were not just for Gaza or the suffering of the world. They moved a wild torrent of expression that needed a new home. A home that didn’t judge or insist on needing a reason to show up. The kind of place where people ask aloud, I wonder what animal lay here?

I did. 🙂

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So this week, may you turn towards what troubles you, tenderly. Even just a little. May your wild animal body feel fully. May you learn to trust it, fully. May you know that you don’t have to hold it all.

Here’s Brandi C’s version of that 90s classic by the Indigo Girls.

 

Jennifer