Are you surviving or thriving ?

Whats the point of life, to survive or thrive more often than not ? once you sift through defining success… either financial / power / recognition for a specific skill you excel in. Whats left ? your inner being. shifting from what are you doing to who are you being ?

I have spent so much of my life in survival energy.from real life threat to perceived. i have been quite resilient for a long time and proud of this feature of my ability to overcome such severe situations of life and death.

yet i have reached a point with no matter the 20 + years of emotional work and healing i have done and learned about… i still struggled with my mind + body connection which i needed to experience true thriving. i always had moments of experiencing this, yet never integration of it all.

this has stuck with me biologically hoarding stress responses ( triggers ) in my body that no longer serve me. From headaches, to back pain, to feeling stupid when facing achievement , to how to connect with my children and husband deeper. I knew it all in my head… and still had blockages that i couldn’t move past. This is how i jumped into nervous system work to connect my mine and body in order to integrate it all. its been messy… not easy.. and so enlightening of what i was missing for so long. i lived in autopilot with safety walls to never be hurt or vulnerable.

I was missing out on deep enjoyment of true fluid connection with myself and others / environment to reach thriving sensations. In the current state of the world… we are all surviving in this time of serious threat to our lives. our physical bodies, and our social emotional connection. This is traumatic. This shift in the paradigm is stress on our systems ( bodies and brains ) and what i’ve learned is the difference of surviving it ( which most of us will and shifting it to thriving ) is release the stressors arising as agile as possible from our bodies in order to not hoard and catalog this trauma for decades to come. i call this healthy resilience. It requires the awareness of how stress responses live in our bodies. not just our brain and how we think of the stressors but physically getting it out of our bodies. Stress usually takes us straight to our brain and how can we fix it. Sometimes there is nothing to fix while in survival mode…. its simply the act of being equipped with tools to sit in the shit of the feeling ( anxiousness, anger, confusion, anxiety of unknown ) long enough to be allow our nervous system we all possess is wise and knows how to naturally release the activation ( stress response ) its scary when you don’t have tools to do so … and the occasional movie vegging out and long walks helps. But to dive deeper… “ orienting “ to our selves and environment is the first step to this work.

It takes courage to flip the switch from surviving to thriving. WE all want this in our souls…. and also live in a system that doesn’t empower you… you must empower yourself.and usually emotions are last to be the missing link in thriving.

Surviving - remaining alive, continuing to live, fighting death

Thriving - to thrive is to do well or flourish. to flourish or grow vigorously, and it can be applied to something like a business or to something or someone's actual health.

We have experienced the roller coaster of life. Some good days, months and years. But we also experience the draining and less fortunate times where we feel dark emotions, and become unclear of where to lead next. This is life and i believe we can all thrive even on those rough patches.

How so…. by being in control of our life. The only way to feel in control is to feel safe within your own skin at all times no matter the challenge you are faced with.

I believe that given the clear acknowledgement and agility within the 5 dimensions of your emotional self. you will never to feel out of control again. and can build the capacity you yearn for to handle this thing called life and its stressors. This takes time, and takes the work. Facing the emotion and sensation you experience and apply releasing regulation tools to free yourself of that. Then redirect. We get sucked into so much “ easy outs” like foods, tv, social media, partying, hobbies and more.

There is power in awareness and noticing these hard moments head on. They allow you to live deeply, the range of expression of energy in our selves and environment. Without being afraid that it will suck you in, victimize you obligated to feel endless suffering.

I keep working on thriving rather than surviving.