Sweden week four - Feeling of helplessness without avoidance strategy
I'm writing here from week 6 in Sweden looking back on the last few weeks.
Not much has happened this week. We left the plateau and made our way to Östersund. The weather wasn't so pleasant, so I visited second-hand stores and worked things off in a café. It was also a good week to plan the next few weeks. This process has also detached me somewhat. Not having a real place of refuge in the world at the moment means there is no break for the part of me that seeks and needs security. The attempt to create such a place, at least in the short term, is subject to the tension between “wanting to hide and rest” and the healthy need for some everyday life, some regularity. If this attempt doesn't bear fruit quickly and immediately, the anxious part panics and a whole house of cards seems to collapse.
Everything I encounter on this trip, and I am much more aware of it here, as being distracted by other people and activities (which is exactly what makes traveling alone so difficult and interesting), is a grey scale of this feeling. I also like to distract myself on this trip. I also feel the need to take a break from the liveliness and everything that awaits behind it. I also want it to be simple and easy. Series or movies give me a short break and I love that. But it's not the solution, it just postpones it. The thing to do for me and I think for everyone is to face the feeling that scares us the most.
If you're interested in my trip, you can get more day-to-day insights on Instagram in the stories and highlights!
I'm currently reading a book about how to get through this emotion instead of avoiding it and aligning your whole life with this avoidance strategy. And this strategy is the real illusion. Because as soon as it doesn't work, I am immediately thrown back on my feelings and my fears. Since my plan for my next accommodation didn't quite work out as I had hoped, I was immediately very scared and felt the feeling of helplessness, that I wanted to “escape” all the time, in my whole body. I remembered the book and dared to explore this feeling further. And it brought me great relief. I didn't absorb the whole portion of helplessness I felt, but I did take a big bite.
Resistance is the real suffering. And I don't want to suffer anymore, I want to be truly free and not follow a strategy that is no longer necessary. If I haven't proved my strength to myself by now, then I won't in the future either.
