Hey, All!

Spoiler: this article is about fear – fear of death, fear of carbs, and the fomo underlying certain kinds of perfectionism. But really, about how new openings never stop coming, if you really are open to them!

I don’t know about you, but consuming any kind of news is incredibly stressful. There is very little out there that is NOT: scary headlines, shallow celebrity gossip, or some other bullshit designed to distract us from reality, and from terror. It’s really no wonder people are going down rabbit holes, be they political, conspiracies, earth or human health dangers, spiritual, or plain old fluffy memes.

I am human and therefore also affected in these ways. I am feeling my way through the terror and the weird collection of easily available options to cope, often sleep disrupted, pretty often working to re-ground. I have to sometimes just allow the fear, but have been working to NOT collapse. I am sometimes avoiding or taking breaks from thinking about politics or regular life stress in order to function. Sometimes just saying no to rushing, squeezing it in, and overriding myself. I know I am judged for this, even by those close to me. I am sometimes funneling that energy into my guitar practice, singing, painting or drawing. Sometimes just everyday chores get the attention.

I am realizing that it is going to continue to be work to stay grounded. I am resurrecting an old practice of collecting the quotes and words of wise ones that easily re-center me, but plan to keep them around more visibly everywhere in my spaces – walls, desk, calendar, sometimes even send myself emails. I hand copy them, print them, email them to myself, put post-its around.

Other work around this grounding leads to my next subject: fear of carbohydrates. Fear of sugar, probably more specifically. I’ll spare you the story of my first 12 years of life restricted from sugar and salt, and required to fast, by those in charge for reasons yet unclear. After 12 or so years of my bloodwork numbers slowly deteriorating, I’ve discovered that many of the current health fads I’ve fallen for are the likely culprits, not “normal aging”, not “menopause”. Among these being keto, paleo, IF, fasting, fasted exercise, high fat, cold plunges (only done that twice – horrible! wound up sick after both times!), high intensity exercise in every format you can think of, running, skipping breakfast. Whew! That’s probably not everything on the list, but you get the picture. Oh, and fish oil.

So, as a therapist who bases pretty much every decision on the nervous system benefit for clients, with the goal of reducing allostatic load as much as possible without overly destabilizing the system (some is normal and unavoidable for 24 or sometimes 36 hrs), I have known for quite some times about the stress (actual! cortisol rising!) of hunger and low blood sugar for a long time. I could not brook it with all the low-carb pop culture and “research” out there. I accidentally tripped over this guy who makes a pretty convincing case that carbohydrate restriction is not a good idea because of the chronic stress it creates in our physiology.

Now I’m trying to increase clean carbs (sorry, does not include grains beyond white rice – so, no, not bread or pasta), and discover how deeply entrenched all the fears are and the meanings I was taught about food, and sugar in particular. It is quite a revelation to find out I have been basically underfeeding myself (it’s a lot of food to eat if you eat real food!) while gaining weight, because the starvation of my body deprived of its preferred fuel has systematically reduced my metabolism and raised my stress hormones.

It’s hard to believe how much I’ve accomplished personally mental-health and trauma resolution-wise under those conditions. I’m excited to see what happens after a period of signaling safety and abundance to my body in these really concrete ways! Really looking forward to the day when it’s a normal occurrence for me to wake up feeling rested and ready to go.

I’m celebrating every time I notice I’ve moved past binaries (“why should i have to measure my food and take supplements to be healthy?”) toward an acknowledgement of the unique and unprecedented stressors and complexity of what it means to be a human living in the world today.

RE fomo: I am working on paring down to the essentials – what I really care about, who should be in my life, what I want to accomplish (not through a pop culture success lens), who should be in my life. Being really present, instead of collecting experiences and stuff.

That’s all I got for now.

Hug em if you got em, go create something or go make someone’s day. It’s what we’re here for.

Cheers!

c