Do you feel sometimes as a parent that you are flooded with energy? On overdrive, so much to do in a day, to get done, busy doing one thing after another, ticking it off, task after task, one place to the next to the next. With the sense that at the end of the day you might get to a point when it is all done, when you can collapse, finally sit down, or have a bit of peace? This energy may keep you on high alert in various ways - maybe you constantly check your phone, find yourself pacing without purpose, or find it difficult to sit down and give something your full focus. Or maybe during your day you find yourself tuning out - you might not even hear your children, you might feel a disconnection to what’s going on around. Maybe you are playing with your child and wishing you were watching Netflix alone under the duvet. Maybe you are overseeing homework and just going through the motions not really present.
If any of this sounds familiar it’s likely that you and your system are in a survival mode.
The thing about this is that unless there is a real emergency this state/mode does not serve us and from this place we are totally disconnected, off line! Which means health, growth and healing are not possible while we remain here.
Activity is great and rest and recuperation are needed at times but when they are carried out from a place of survival then they are not doing us or those around us any good.
The good news is that once we recognise this there is much we can do to reconnect.
More on this on Friday.
But for now I invite you to notice your system over the coming days. Think of it as an engine and check in… when does it have too much energy running through it? And when does it have not enough energy running through it? And are there times it is ‘just right’? Try mapping this for one day and see what it looks like….
(Survival Flare 2 is a painting by Celestial Images)