I've been in FREEZE Mode, how about you?

Overwhelm, fear and freeze mode

How the devil are you?

I've been on a scary ride, and continue to do so, and I know I'm not alone in this. In fact, the world is with me, and in that, I take some comfort, as well as feel a tremendous empathy and compassion for everyone on this ride with me.

I'll not go into details now, but suffice to say I've been grateful for the mental wellbeing toolkit I have to see me through, so I thought I'd share some of what has worked for me with you here.  

Now, just because I'm a therapist and coach, most would think my resilience to challenges would be amazing, and that's true at times, however, I'm also living with PTSD, have had Post Natal Depression, Post Natal Anxiety and Birth Trauma, so that brings with it a whole host of issues on the day to day, and the triggers have been firing left, right and centre.

So I've gone back to basics.  There have been days when I've felt unable to "do" anything. The long list of work and home tasks has kept growing and my inner creative twitch has been a nervous wreck.  I've been in FREEZE MODE. My mind has said "NAAAA", " Not going there, or anywhere in fact", and i've felt really frustrated as a result. Which has led to self doubt and an inner critic that has basically brought out major imposter syndrome (hence you haven't heard from me for a while). 

Physically too, i've had to push myself to move. Just doing my usual 20 minutes of movement and 10 minutes meditation in the mornings has been off-the-richter-scale in resistance, and putting my usual pen to paper to journal my day has left my notebook as blank as my creative mind.

So I stopped trying and waited. I observed my thoughts and did nothing about them, (except occasionally take note of the really shocking ones for further discussion at another time!) and I grounded myself. No more, no less. Saying "this too shall pass" and "It's okay to feel this way, it's a normal reaction".

And slowly, i've felt more able to add a few more tools to my daily self care... and now I'm here. Writing this to you in the hope it will help you feel a little lighter.  This is to show you that it's real to feel all over the frickin shop right now and even if you considered yourself to be the most resilient, go-getter, high achiever, it's alright to not be all of that right now.

Taking it back to basics is always a winner in my book, so see the video link below for a few ideas to help keep you grounded and un-freeze you when the proverbial thoughts and subsequent feelings are hitting the fan: