Paragon sleep has been helping A LOT. I bumped my titles to 1 min yesterday and I got into bed last night and it was like I was only focused on deep restful relaxation and tuning out everything about my life that causes anxiety.
But then something else happened too. Since I was on 1 min of seductress with rogue as my body was relaxing I could feel the constraints in me. I could feel the expectations, judgements, guilt, etc. all the stuff from the outside. I could sense how it didn’t flow in my body, it felt like absorbing all this energy and it was compacting it into this dense unmovable ball of lead that weighs me down.
So I got angry and I pushed back in my mind. I was like why the fuck do I need to listen to ANY of this? These arbitrary rules and expectations, what I “should” do, how I need to work hard, how I need to achieve something big that society deems valuable vs my own internal value system. I get so frustrated with the outside world but I’m the one saying “oh ok, I guess I’ll just listen to all of you, my needs aren’t valid”. That’s all me, I do that. And even worse when I do speak up, when I buck the system, there’s a voice that says don’t do that it’s dangerous.
Then I thought about myself and where I want to be and who I want to be. The familiar voice came up that said, that’s not you. Other women can be bold and confident and sexy, but not you. You’re just not like that. And then I thought to myself oh yeah? Watch me.
I value authenticity, I think it’s really important. But to be authentic you have to know who you are and what you want. If you’re still under the weight of dimming yourself that authenticity can be misguided. That’s what I’m learning. There’s a whole other person underneath this protective shell that wants to emerge. It’s not me changing, it can feel like going against “myself” but that part that feels like myself is what others wanted from me. And you know what? There are going to be some people in my life that don’t like it because they thought they knew me and want that version of “me” to stick around. But that’s not my responsibility.
Upping my exposure time has revealed to me it’s not that I don’t want to change. It’s that when the exposure amount of the sub is too low I didn’t give voice and courage to the part of me that DOES want to change. The part that wants to stand up to the oppression and rigid rules and mistreatment. That part needs more empowerment and support, not less. The conflict and strain wasn’t overwhelm like I thought it was.
