perfectionism vs. presence
Do you often find yourself zoning out, pulled backwards into a haze of blurred vision and non-presence? Do you yawn unexpectedly or feel sleepy just thinking about stressful situations?
If we lean into pop psychology's current obsession with trauma, we might uncover some explanations worth exploring. Maybe dissociation, zoning out, or disembodiment are "solutions" to the messiness of being fully present.
If you've ever been fully zipped into the cozy clarity of the now, you might've noticed how fast time flies. When we’re not stuck worrying, planning, or making up stories, time slips right through us. We feel different, calm and sometimes, things get missed.
That doesn’t seem fair, right? Being present is sold to us like some magical fix-all, so why do we make mistakes when we’re in the now-forget deadlines and to-do list tasks? Why doesn’t it serve as a conduit for our perfection?
Let me gently poke at some hidden belief system you might have around your maladaptive strategies. Were you really perfect when you were anxious and worrying? Were you getting everything done in your frantic urgency? Or were you on auto-pilot, inevitably missing so-and-so’s birthday? Was your constant reflection on the past and nail-biting about the future really getting you to your favorite self, or were you ending each day in a dizzy overstimulation as soon as you tucked into bed?
I took a moment to shift my relationship with zoning out, breathing deeply, and inviting curiosity. I wondered if this strategy was protecting an underlying belief in my nervous system—that if I allowed myself to be fully present, the constant worrying and overthinking wouldn’t keep me "safe" from the unpredictability of life.
Worrying, after all, can be its own form of escape. It may not be as tropical as a daydream, but it pulls us away from our true feelings, prepping us to dodge negative outcomes—and by extension, negative feelings.
We, and our bodies by extension, usually don’t do things for no reason. There is so much information and wisdom to explore when we make the effort to put down our judgement for a second and pick up curiosity.
Offerings:
~What do I gain by spacing out?
~What do I create distance from when my body is not present?
~What am I doing/ feeling right before I am pulled out of being present?
~What belief or fear might be fueling my need to escape the present moment?
~When I am present, what am I afraid will happen if I let go of worry and control?
~How does my body feel when I transition from being present to dissociating or zoning out?
~What would it be like to approach spacing out with curiosity instead of judgment?
