Connecting Mind and Body

I have to apologize once again for being so MIA lately. I had an exciting volunteer opportunity that I was really focused on and then my body caught some type of stomach bug that has caused me to do nothing but relax and reset the past few days. Along with this I had no idea what I wanted to write about. I had multiple ideas but nothing was taking form in my mind and I always feel like I can't post my thoughts until they are these grand posts of wisdom and experience. I know that's a little ridiculous but, hey, it's what happens in my mind. Anyways, I thought I would catch you all up on what's been going on and what I'm trying to really focus on. 

As I said earlier, I had an exciting volunteer opportunity come up. Well actually, I made it happen, which is also super exciting. Through therapy and getting to know myself better, I've developed a more clear vision of what I want to do with my life and one night I was searching the internet when I couldn't sleep and found a volunteer opportunity that fit exactly that. I sent in my application without hesitation and quickly found myself setting up a meeting at the organization in person. I was so excited during all this that I had no time to get nervous or even really process what I was doing. Then about two days before, the nerves hit. I kept going back and forth between "this is a horrible idea" and "this is a great idea". I'm happy to say that I attended the meeting, fell even more in love with the organization and this opportunity, and i start volunteering next week! This is not to say that all this came easy, but somehow I found the power to push through my nerves, because this was something I really wanted to do. 

After that success I thought I was going to stick to this positive note and find even more successes. I was wrong, however, when a couple of days later I tried to go out with my parents to take some pictures and quickly found myself spiraling into panic mode. The weird thing, though, was that I wasn't actually nervous, but I was getting so worked up over the fact that I wasn't having anxiety that I ended up causing my own anxiety. Confusing right? This is pretty much the basis of panic disorder. You panic over the fear of panicking. In my mind I was completely okay, I mean the whole outing was my idea, but my body was waiting to panic and was so confused as to why it wasn't happening that I ended up freaking out, even thought I knew there was nothing to worry about. This brings me to the title of this post and what I'm trying to focus on right now--connecting my mind and body. 

All this time I've spent making relationships with emotions and learning strategies to deal with my anxiety and depression has been great and I see huge progress, but it has almost 100% been mental. I've pushed my body to the side to focus on my mind. Whether this was lack of exercise, because it made my heart rate rise and that made me panic, or even just something on the more simple side, my body wasn't part of the equation. However, since my anxiety was consuming all of my time and energy this didn't really matter. Who has time to exercise when it's going to be a battle of convincing yourself that your body is reacting normally and is not indeed having a panic attack? Not me, that's for sure. Now that I have a little bit of a better grip on my anxiety and am willing to try more things, my body is standing up for itself and wanting the same attention that I gave my mind. I don't know if this makes sense (it definitely makes more sense when my therapist explains it) but this is something I truly feel is happening to me. I feel I need to take the next step to bring my body and mind together and have them on the same page. This way, when I start telling myself that I'm okay, my body will understand and won't self sabotage and start panicking. How do I get my mind and body to be on the same page? Well this is what I don't exactly know. One of the most common ways to do this according to my therapist is by mindfulness activities such as meditation. I don't know about you but I really struggle with meditation, so I'm trying to figure out something that might help me until I am ready to conquer meditation. I'm going to start out by checking in with my body the same way I did my mind and let it know that I hear it and I will take care of it. I know that this won't solve my problems, though, and that it is only the first step but I think it is the right step for me to take right now. 

Do any of you have any practices for connecting your mind and body? I would love to hear them! I am open to all suggestions as I try to figure out what works best for me. 

Until next time. 💜