Feeling good again: I always seem to need a bit of cry as my sympathetic nervous system loosens its grip and “deactivates”.
I seem to constantly want to live in that kind of “stressed” state, as my default position. When I say want, I mean - it’s the habit. I’m aware when it happens that I’m not feeling good but then rather than finding my way into feeling good, I start to panic. It’s like I don’t know which way to go and then I just get more and more anxious.
Whereas when feeling good it looks so different - I look back at how I was drowning and see that the water was a lot more shallow than I thought if id only touched my feet to the ocean floor.
One key characteristic of when I’m feeling good or better is that I’m very absorbed in it being this moment, in whatever I’m doing. By contrast, when I’m feeling bad it’s like I’m revving the engine of my mind in all other directions other than what is here and now. There are all sorts of mental boxes that start opening and it all becomes very complicated. I then tend to “watch” this all happening rather than getting back to feeling good, which seems to cause the anxiety to increase.
I’m trying to viscerally store this transition I made earlier in memory, so that I can find my way into feeling good next time it happens.
Another difference is that when I’m feeling good, there is a softness, an ease, a non seriousness. There is no need to escape because it’s nice to be where one is.
Whereas the activated, stressed, sympathetic state is “hard” (as in rigid) by contrast, everything is tense and very serious. There is a strong desire to escape that comes with it. It’s like walking on hot coals.