How to Feel Safe When Everything is Different and You Don’t Feel Like Yourself

I don’t feel like myself.

Last week I spontaneously did a liver/gallbladder flush.

The jury’s still out for me as to how it went. I saw less gallstones than in the past but it's been and four days, my back hurts and I’m constipated. I'm a highly sensitive woman and whatever is causing it, I feel…not like myself. 

I might be scared if I didn’t feel so calm.

At the very least that is the benefit and gift of doing a cleanse like this: my mind is quiet like a calm lake.
 
That’s a rarity, and while I notice the lack of usual sharp feelings, judgments and criticisms of life, others and myself, I notice the worrier part of my mind trying to stand up, waving, calling my attention.  I’m glancing in that direction but in a way, the old feelings associated with “when something’s not right” (which is usually, in my habitual way of perceiving or interpreting what is,) isn’t finding it’s foothold. The gears aren’t quite catching.
 
Nevertheless, here are the doubts floating about: Am I seriously ill now (did I cause more harm than good) or am I still recovering from the flush – which is an abrupt and strong affront to the body, really? Will I return to normal? And what is that? And would that be the best thing, anyway?

A new chapter
I’ve been working on changing strong habits – in behavior and thoughts. I feel that somehow my structure is shifting.  And so, if I choose a broader perspective and positive outlook, I can say that even though I feel calm and tired and semi-worried and in general (even before the flush) more and more fine with doing less and less – really, my life is amazing and good. I mean, how many people GET to choose how they use their time to be in highest alignment with what their spirit and body plead for?

Or, maybe we’re all free but we choose to follow societal norms and expectations and end up living these lives of DOING, disconnected to various degrees, from what WE really want, long for, would benefit from and indeed need.

Even me, here in my glorious beloved village in Mexico with all the freedom in the world and I know it – still, after all these years and even a book about following your heart and dreams– I stillcan get involved in actions that are addictive and designed for escape or distraction from the emotions really happening, which I fear I can’t trudge through.

So I stay on the computer. So I watch videos. Even worse, I spend hours SEARCHING for a video to watch and find nothing and there, that was how I spent my evening. Or I eat way beyond my hunger – only to hate myself in the morning. A decades long behavior pattern.

My priority right now, as it has been for the last several years, is to heal my relationship with my body.

Being a being in a body
At a more cosmological level, which is where I tend to live and tread, my desire and goal is to learn how to be a being: that sectioned off piece of All that I am, here on this plane and planet, where I coincide with this physical creature that is full of organs and cells; the body that is hosting me in this life.

It’s a mystery to me, and the very basic question of, “What is it to be me and how do I do it?” What is it that makes decisions for or against my body’s benefit and what ought it be? Is it my mind that has tried to rule the show all these years, leaving my body abused and distrusted, disregarded and disrespected? Wahhh, this makes me feel to sad.

Yet this is where I am, reevaluating this being/body intertwining, longing for peace and harmony between us.

I did this gallbladder/liver flush to try to get things on track once again with my digestion. But I don’t feel well, so maybe it didn’t work, or maybe I made things work, or maybe my body is processing and moving slowly in my judgment, but doing as well as it can. Maybe it’s considering my proposal and moving the pieces around to accommodate the change. 

While I don’t have those answers, I can A. choose to worry and lather myself into a panic, if I can muster the energy. B. Be with what is as it is. C. Do my best to take this moment of uncertainty and newness as an opportunity to listen a bit better to the desires of my body and consider the subsequent actions an experiment in the “new order.”
 
What about worrying?
I am a habitual worrier and so that is the direction I tend to go. Today I’m remembering what someone told me their tai chi teacher said once, when asked “What would you say about worrying in terms of energy and health?” The response was, “Don’t.”

If I don’t worry, if I take it slow and do the little things I feel drawn to do today, trying out gentleness and gradualness, I am favoring the calm that is there, in the midst of the unknown: “What is this? What’s happening? Where’s this going? Am I all right? Is there something drastic I ought to be doing?”

In other words, if I’m wanting to experience my existing in a different way, in harmonious comradery with my body, then maybe I WILL be feeling fundamentally different. Maybe this calm will be the new normal. Maybe I’ll be moving more slowly and consciously, enjoying small things like the dead blue and pink moth I found in a water tub outside this morning. Or the breathtaking (literally) sensation of the soft new bright green plant growth beneath my feet as I faced the sun and did my simple exercises with the elements.

How to feel safe when everything is different and I don’t feel like myself

The only answer to the question of “How to feel safe when everything is different and I don’t feel like myself,” is to find the Divine, the me that is real, inside me, even in strange, painful and uncomfortable moments.

This to me seems key, because – it’s easier to feel “Oh, this is me” when I feel well and “normal”. But what about times like now when my back hurts so much that it’s taking over my consciousness? If I am “lost” due to physical discomforts, then I could potentially be in trouble, because who knows if at some time in my life, I’ll be in constant pain or discomfort?

I’m so used to feeling pain-free, relatively well and energetic, that I take it for granted. But what if that disappears and I can’t count on the old normal as the definition of me to return to? If I depend on feeling how I most like to feel in order to feel like “me”, it is a limited and problematic strategy. 

I am a person who wants to feel connected to “myself” at all times. Especially aware as I am of the clock ticking and who knows when my time will expire? I want to be as connected to Myself and the deepest level possible, at all times, including up to and through my passage into the next experience and realm.

Seeking the divinity within
This pain and discomfort and discombobulation I’m feeling after the liver cleanse is an opportunity for me to seek out the divinity within that I know is always there, because I’ve felt it countless (how fortunate I am) times during decades of meditation – even when I’m not able to sit up straight and cross-legged in the usual, accustomed way.

Where is the real me, here now, with this feeling of lostness and listnessness?

That is what I’m pausing to do: find Me within, despite the circumstances and distracting physical maladies and sensations.
 
And it feels most important. ​