In this week’s episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions, I talk about our discomfort with time, space, our feelings and our thoughts. Prior to this coronavirus, I chatted with people who for one reason or another had taken time out. Think redundancy, bereavement, career break, travelling, maternity leave, breakup, etc. Planned or unplanned, they all experienced discomfort about who to be and what to do. Some cut their plans short as soon as the discomfort emerged only to hitch their wagons to new painful decisions.
In this episode, I talk about some of the inner chatter we experience when we have time and space, including noise about being lazy, self-indulgent, unreliable and missing out. I delve into some of the reasons why we might feel super uncomfortable with boredom, relaxation and not performing in the role we typically do in our relationships.
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Links mentioned
- Am I in the Right Job? (ep.164)
- Are you over your bandwidth? (ep. 100)
- Giving up roles. (ep. 128)
- Being over-responsible
- Hard Resets, Anxiety and Corona Miracles with Exes (ep. 175)
- The Self-Care Sandwich (ep. 71)
- Allowing you to take time off work (ep. 39)
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Nat
Boy, lots of this really applies. Part of it having to do with having so many demands in my time, being so over scheduled, then being forced to do little this past winter. When you live in a place with serious winter without electricity, daylength and weather dictates your schedule. Not a bad thing really. It also made me consider the very real possibility that those partners, while very carefully vetted, ever since my ex husband, were more interested in my status and assets rather than Noquay per se. Often think my current dating/socialization hiatus may become permanent. Given my age and values, attaining another compatible partner may not be realistic and maybe that’s ok.
I think that sometimes we don’t realise how busy and overscheduled we are until we have to slow down. Being this way served a purpose for you, and that’s okay. It may, for instance, have protected you from having to deal with dating. But I wonder in the slowing down whether there is a new way to be. Something that’s maybe gentler on your time, body and mind. Maybe you don’t *need* so many demands on your time. It’s like “Who am I without all of this doing?”
The hardest part of this lockdown is the tens of millions of people losing their jobs! I am fortunate but I know what that is like as a single mother and i really feel overwhelmed for them! For me personally, the hardest part of lockdown (on week 4 here) is the fact I am a people person and now on 4 weeks with almost no social contact in real life. More people are taking social distancing literally and not just physically when already many people are not so friendly. I am the type of person who enjoys exchanging pleasantries with people I encounter. We are not meant for this.
The economic, emotional, social and physical upheaval is unreal. We didn’t see ourselves being here just a few weeks ago. I think that these times do make us evaluate what we’re meant for. The very social will feel discomforted by not being physically social, and the more introverted might discover more about their social aspects. Us humans do tend to define ourselves on these. What I’ve found interesting is how I’ve spoken to more people out and about (but at a distance) than I would ordinarily. People in the supermarket or the park. So when you do venture out for socially distanced walks or grocery shopping or whatever, you can be the person who starts the pleasantries. It’s not the full shebang you want, but it’s definitely something. Hugs.