I’d love to share with you my experience with waking up my fatigue response. I am describing my fatigue as an embodied response to stress, that my body adopted to protect me from stressful situations and circumstances, many, many years ago.
I began to practise my awareness when I trained in Embodiment and have grown from many layers of learning and expanding. Here I am to share my latest aha!
My awareness enabled me to sense my fatigue like a blanket closing down from my head, putting me to sleep. I judged this as “unwanted” because I had learned and understood that I “ought to” be active and getting things done. I felt regret that hours, days, weeks spent on the sofa in a doze were an obstacle to all the activities I wished to engage in. Yes, I would have liked to be more active. I didn’t know the exact proportions that worked for me.
At one point in my reflections, I suddenly recognised that I had been asleep on the sofa for a couple of hours, over a period of at least 30 years. I had told no-one that this was happening. I pretended that this behaviour was a small blip that would soon pass and my energy would be free to flow. In between my bouts of fatigue, I was a working mother and wife, who showed up with an appearance of lively energy and bright engagement with work and other pastimes. Also, I had headaches that lasted for days. No one in my life spoke about this, so I assumed that my actions were unspeakable and no-one wanted to know. My guess now is that this was serious and needed my attention.
My pattern of assuming that my voice, my needs and my fatigue and stresses were not important meant that I kept them hidden and in denial. I had found that part time work, taking care of our home and myself, my family, children and ageing parents were stressful and said nothing, as though I was not “allowed” any recognition, affirmation, support, appreciation. I told myself that after a rest I could simply get up and continue with the commitments I had taken on. I did not believe that I had “permission” to express my needs or ask for help. I was absolutely certain that there would be no help. I had created an unconscious contract that “I should be responsible for everything by myself, no matter what the cost.”
I didn’t manage by myself to find a helpful way of living with things my body found stressful and to distribute my energy between them. I rose and fell in waves of activity and collapse/ fatigue, eventually burning out and leaving work in 2017. Today I understand that I had been experiencing stress for many years. I recognised that one of my responses was that of shutdown, created to protect me from pain and fear which had been continual in my youth. Slowly, I started to notice this shutdown pattern – not breathing, not speaking, hiding my truth in fear. Slowly, I began to allow breathing, speaking and showing my feelings with diminishing fear – wow! This was a huge step forwards only a few years ago.
Now, I begin to see my fatigue as a stress response, which had served to protect me as far as possible, from the pain and fear of speaking out to other people and expecting rejection or dismissal. What a relief to see this and know that I myself could find a way through this, to allow my energy to flow more freely. As I noticed the fatigue arising, I told it: “Thank you for protecting me all these years. You did me great service and I am deeply grateful. I have some other strategies now so I no longer need to fall into sleep whenever there is a stressful thing. “Hurrah!”
I now have other ways to notice stress. I “let go of” things I can’t manage, I say “no” without judging myself. I purposely “do” less, spread activities over time and choose activities that nourish and uplift me above all the things I might “have to” get through. I can now enjoy more than one activity per day without collapsing. I welcome joyfully my capacity to act. Amazing! I feel my energy flowing in my body with joy and gratitude. My energy may be boisterous or quiet and every energy is welcome and valuable.
Gratitude for my resting is needed and genuine. When I rest now, it is not “collapsing” but a reasonable body response to activity and I accept it, welcome it and express my gratitude for this privilege. I speak about the process of un-layering my sense of stress and expecting more of myself than was possible, judged by my culture: that more must be done and faster. I speak about the fatigue that arose in response, to create rest when I was genuinely exhausted. I speak about allowing all of my energies to live in me and be known or unknown, to be accepted and part of my wholeness. I speak about the process of being able to do more with gentleness and care, with kindness for my energy and appreciation for all I can manage and for what I can’t manage. I bring love and compassion to my energies and practise daily to integrate them and feel the aliveness in my whole body.
If this is helpful in any way for you, it is my gift. You may have fatigue for other reasons – I am only sharing this in case it might be valuable for someone else. Do seek medical or holistic advice if your fatigue is appearing in other ways. Thank you for listening. My appreciation and blessings for the land that holds and nourishes me, for my past that brings me here to this moment, for the air that breathes and voices me, for the light that vibrates energy through me and the water that flows through me and the world, for the spirit of all that holds, calls, nurtures and uplifts me, I bow with gratitude for all my receiving. I now receive into myself more resources, to replenish and restore my energy.
Thank you Ron, this makes so much sense ❤️