Switching Off Survival Mode

I'm currently in the stage of my cycle that causes my empathy and creativity to be in overdrive, but also heightens my feelings of deep sadness that fuel a compulsion to save the world from pain and suffering. It also causes me to feel immense fatigue at the thought of taking action, so all I can do is dream of solutions that quickly fizzle out in my brain.  This is the stage that takes places days before my period begins. Also, the pain probably influences my brain too... pain influences everything. 

Here's what I can't stop thinking about: 

I keep observing that people are living in "survival mode." We are a collective group of individuals all suffering independently because we've been trained that we must be 100% self-sufficient on our own without ever depending on anyone else. The reason this is so stressful is because it goes against human nature. We're a social and dependent species. It's in our DNA to need other humans for our survival. We're trying so hard to accomplish being totally independent, but as a result, we forgot how to be dependable for other people who we need in our lives. 

As a result, people are recognizing that they need healthy attention, but they don't know what healthy attention looks like, so they'll be satisfied with any attention. So they're settling for acting in unhealthy ways in order to attract unhealthy attention, because any attention feels better than no attention. It's like settling for eating a bowl of candy for a meal simply because you don't know how to find a meal of steak and veggies to eat. 

What all people really need is to meet their dependency needs. This looks like: respect for the soil we stand on and the natural environment of the earth that we live in, a reliable small community of people to belong to, a skill or value to contribute to people in our community, and a curiosity for each other that inspires us to care deeply about each other above anything in our lives. We need to care about our community more than our jobs, our money, and our ambitions. Our communities should create our jobs and the role we fill in our small local society. Our communities should meet our needs. 

Until we learn how to be people who serve each other, we're going to starve to death for healthy attention. We're going to keep making bad choices in our relationships, personal ambitions, goals, and our moral values. We're going to continue to view other people as "toxic" because they get in our ways of living our own personal lives according to our own personal standards. We're going to continue to teach each other to cut "toxic" people out of our lives, so that we can each do what we want with our lives. 

Don't we understand that we're creating "toxic" people by denying other people respect? The less respect we give to each other, the more these other people will ferment in their own self-pity and insecurities that causes them to develop poor coping mechanisms that lead them to acting to "toxic" ways. If we don't want to deal with toxic people, let's encourage each other to be better and lead by example, right? We need to develop a culture of respect.

We should reframe our minds to view other people and ourselves with curiosity. When you learn to wonder "why" you behave in certain ways, you'll start to observe your real needs. Your real needs are what you need to be mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically healthy person. Your real needs are NOT what you need to be a financially successful person. You will probably find that your real needs are in conflict with how we're forced to try and survive in society, because our economy treats us like robots and not as humans with real needs. When you know your real needs, you can communicate your needs to others. Then you can observe the real needs of other people and choose to help them meet their real needs. If you're really lucky, savvy, or financially blessed, then you can develop your financial security in ways that help you meet your real needs too. 

I know I'm being vague. This is mostly just stream of consciousness to see what comes out of me during this moment of creativity. Perhaps I'll write a more well thought-out book about this topic. 

My point is that we're in a collective health crisis because we're denying our "real needs" in order to survive in a society that is unsurvivable for most people. The ONLY way to move forward as a human race and stop living in "survival mode" is to learn how to live in small communities that care for each other again. We can't take on the weight of world, but we can help lift the burdens of our small local communities. We can do our part in our small ways, and that's all we're really capable of doing. We don't need to be global people. That's too huge of an ask for anyone. 

I am a firm believer that living in chronic "survival mode" is fueling our chronic illness pandemic. All the bad foods and poor diet, disconnection from nature, artificial lights, and modern problems are definitely huge contributors to our health crisis. I'm convinced that the stress of modern life is the primary root cause, before all the other factors. If I told you to reduce stress in your life, tell me how you would actually be able to do it? How can you reduce stress when you can't eliminate all the overwhelming problems of modern society from your life?

This just appeared on my Facebook feed, and I think it's a good simple example:

Think about how insane it is that we've normalized this extremely high-stress situation: DRIVING. When we're driving on these busy roads with high traffic, we must be on high alert, otherwise we can literally die or kill someone else. One mistake can be deadly. Yet this is NORMAL now. So we really need to trust each other to be on very high alert, right? And yet, people are past capacity in how much stress they can tolerate in their lives. Your mind wanders a lot while you're driving, right? You think about all your needs and problems while you're driving, right? Yet we expect other people to be fully focused on the roads too? Our day-to-day lives are similar to this. We're treating other people as being fully competent, not with the grace and forgiveness that they need because of their quiet internal suffering. Let's stop forcing people to live in high-alert, always ready to survive anything at any moment. 

I understand that many people are dangerous. I know that there are plenty of people who will try to rob me, harm me, take advantage of me, and abuse me. I know that I must stay "on guard." I know I can't simply trust people. I do know, however, that we really need to act with a lot more grace, understanding, and compassion towards others. If we want people to be better, we have to give them room to breathe and be better. The more we expect of other people, the more they'll act in "survival mode," which leads to lots of toxic survival behaviors. 

I can tell you one thing for certain: My body creates so much of its own stress from surviving all my health issues, that I really can't tolerate outside stress from the world. I shut down from a little too much stress. I actually saw a great video from a doctor about this in connection with endometriosis:

So I am not at all embarrassed by the fact that I'm a 38-year-old who chose to get divorced and move back in with my parents. This was very important for me on my healing journey. My marriage was not an environment I could heal in or reduce stress in (when it should have been my sanctuary where I could be safe and heal.) We had very different priorities in life, and his ambitions dominated the life path we took as a couple, which caused me immense stress that I couldn't handle and left me starving to have my "real needs" met. I'm not being negative about him, but I had to finally acknowledge that we were not compatible and could not meet each other's "real needs." This was a very important decision for me. Living with my parents relieves a huge amount of external stress for me. I prioritize a healthy relationship with them and they do the same with me. It's a great environment for me. If I didn't have a place to go where I could reduce stress and feel "safe," I honestly think I wouldn't be here right now. My level of stress was so high that it was doing irreversible damage to my body, heart, mind, and soul. He may have wondered why I didn't want to attend anything social with him, and I understand the answer now: my personal needs were not being met, and that was causing me so much stress that I really couldn't process other people. I didn't have the capacity left for handling even one word from another person. I was starving to meet my personal "real needs." And now that I've been living with my parents for nearly a year, I'm feeling my stress meter lowering slowly. I'm still not ready to be very social. I tried, and found out quickly that I'm not healed enough yet. But I'm improving a lot! 

I was really messed up from a bad marriage. I'm understanding it better and better as time goes on. I was seriously starving for healthy attention.

I'm still catching myself oversharing too easily, as a probe to see if I can trust people.

I'm starting to feel anger where I used to feel numb, and I'm allowing myself to feel that anger now, when I should have felt it years ago.

I'm uncovering more and more emotions that I couldn't tap into while I was only trying to survive, and now I'm slowly learning to feel myself instead of just taking quick action for fear of death or failure.

I'm learning how to breathe when I used to hold my breath - literally, I noticed that I stopped breathing when I had certain thoughts, and now I'm realizing it, so I'm teaching myself to breathe while I have those thoughts now. 

But I'm also recognizing my emotions and behaviors in other people. I see how many people are living in "survival mode." Society is abusing us by requiring us to meet unrealistically high expectations, and we are abusing each other just to try and survive and get ahead in life. We've learned to be in competition with each other instead of being team (community) that encourages each other. This pattern has to stop or the human race is going to kill itself off. As it is, we're unlearning how to be a strong race of people that can thrive, and we're shifting into being a race of people who only knows how to manage day-to-day with no regard for each other. 

We're losing our ability to care about each other because we're at capacity trying to care for only ourselves. 

What are some of my favorite ways to be more in-tune with my "real needs" and help myself meet them? 

- Gardening! Gardening puts me out in the sun, in nature, in the soil, and touching plants. I'm observing the life forms, studying their needs, taking care of them, and helping them thrive. In turn, I'm getting lots of zucchini, cucumber, tomatoes, and sugar snap peas to help sustain me! 

- Creating a routine of cleaning my space. Washing my dishes, picking up after myself, managing laundry... you know. It's how I'm showing myself that I can take care of myself in a healthy way without being overwhelmed. If I don't feel capable of doing chores, I don't stress myself about it. I simply do it when I'm feeling better. 

- Part-time work in a very positive environment where we all agree that it's important to take care of our health! We're a small team that cares about each other. That's worth SO MUCH. It's such a good environment and I really believe in our mission! How many people can say that?

- Going for walks with my parents and having good conversations to deeply connect with them. Family is super important, and doing healthy activities with each other is great motivation. 

- Gaming!!! Why? Because this allows me to have complete and total focus. It's training my brain to stop being hyper alert to outside things. It's training my brain to have longer attention spans. It's training my brain to problem solve without stress. You know what games are actually phenomenal for rebuilding attention spans? Older turn-based games like the original Pokémon games, Final Fantasy 1-12, Sim City, Zoo Planet, and so on. Age of Empires 2 random maps are like calm meditations for me. Octopath Traveler games are wonderful too. Very healthy for retraining my brain that's been trained to be hyper alert. 


The things that ARE NOT working for me:

- Meeting new people. It's too much. I tried. I need to be investing in the relationships I have with close people in my life. I keep accidently ignoring and ghosting people, and it's really not by choice. I think to myself, "I don't have the energy and focus now, I'll reply a little later." That turns into days, weeks, months... It's not intentional. I'm getting overwhelmed way too easily.  If I've done that to you, I'm sorry. Sincerely. I don't have the energy and it's not about you. I'm just not ready yet. 

- Spending time listening to people who just want to complain, talk about all the negative news, and talk about how much they hate people or groups of people. I'm someone who cares deeply about moral justice, but I don't want to waste energy on things I can't control or negative energy that doesn't help solve anything. If you're someone who has so much rage in you that you feel a need to release in through insults, bad attitudes, disrespecting others, constant complaining, whining, bitching, and moaning... then go talk to a therapist, not me. Please. Don't drain me with your negative energy. This is toxic behavior that will cause people to cut you out of their lives. Don't be toxic. Be a positive contribution to society instead. It's possible to be against something in positive ways. 

- Treating myself with food. It's just causing inflammation, weight gain, poor sleep, anxiety, and extra pain. Food can't be the way I reward myself. I need to be super disciplined with food. I must reward myself in other ways. I also have to be careful not to do it by spending money I don't have. My budget is pretty tight. 

- Not following a routine. I'm very much a person who listens to my feelings and does what they say, so thankfully I often feel a strong sense of responsibility, ha! I have to be really aware of the fact that if I do what I feel like, that I won't go to bed, I won't eat well, and I'll end up feeling so much worse. My anxiety will become a problem for me. I'll get overwhelmed by all the things I have to do and haven't done yet. I really need structure to keep my responsible for myself. 

Tom Odell - End Of Suffering

At the end of suffering there's a door There is nothing, and everything and more A sticker on the window saying something like You've got nowhere left to go, take a step inside At the end of suffering there's a room There's a child's crayon drawing of the moon I light my cigarette I lean against the wall I feel that resignation There's nowhere really left to fall Ooh At the end of suffering there's a home And the only way you get there's on your own I lay down on the sofa Turn on the TV Shut my tired eyes Hopelessly, I dream At the end of suffering there's a world At the end of suffering there's a world I stumble to the window Pull the curtains wide Spent so long in darkness, God, it's good to see the sun It shine Ooh Ooh