Here To Unravel… Let’s Go!

CarolineBryan

Vibeys — Lorde

Friday – FriDay. FRieD.DAy

Moving into Saturday.

Let’s just call it the weekENDED.

My brain hasn’t been braining at full capacity this week.

It’s fine –

I’m fine.

We’re fine.

Just a little lag in the system. It’s been a foggy week, I’ve felt scattered most of it – overly caffinated for sure!

I feel like I’ve been moving through this week half on autopilot, half hypersensitive to everything.

You know the weeks where it feels like you’re doing everything, errands, work, home, small talk.

Energy has been a good equal parts overstimulated and introspective. It’s like I’ve been craving quiet but also reaching for information at the same time. Almost like my brain can’t decide if it wants to rest or research.

So naturally, I ended up in a Podcast spiral.

I’ve been listening to everything.

Psychology, Neuroscience, philosophy, human behavior – all the stuff that scratches both the curiosity itch and the inspiration itch.

My fave fave right now?

Everyday Neuro with Dr. Janine Cooper.

I love her accent. And her brain.

She’s got this calm grounded tone. The way she speaks makes you feel like you’re learning without being lectured. It’s Neuroscience, but she made it relatable, even if you aren’t in the psych field. She keeps it relative.

The first episode I played was about impostor phenomenon.

It’s called “Who Do You Think You Aren’t.”

Instant obsession.

Linked Here

I thought, it was a good listen.
She talks about how even the most capable, accomplished people wrestle with that little voice that says you’re faking it. Or you shouldn’t be where you’re standing.

You could have all of this evidence stacked in your favor, but there is something that drowns out all of that and makes you question yourself.

This one tracked… at least for me, in a big way.

It’s not really about doubting my own ability. It’s more like being hyperaware.

I see myself in 360° – The flaws, all of my growth edges, the constant work in progress.

Everyone is really quick to claps for what is visible.

What you can see, touch,or hear… in terms of someones successes.

Personally, I am still learning to celebrate what isn’t all of those things.

The quiet milestones, small steps that created the outward leaps.

Sometimes I feel like I have suppressed my past so much, I forget how much I have overcome-

What I have learned- experienced, fought against, and repurposed in my life.

Most of the time, it doesn’t even seem real to me. I think about the things I have seen, the situations, places I had been, things I allowed, – it was another version of Caroline entirely. One I wouldn’t even recognize now.

I consider these to be the muscle memory of my trauma. The stuff that lives underneath language.

My implicit memories.

It’s not so much remembering what happened. so to speak), it’s what my body learned to predict.

It is what quickly became my survival algorithm.

It felt procedural. Almost automatic. Efficient.

Even after so many years of replacing danger with safety.

I still feel a lot, residually – that feeling of heightened altertness, even when there is nothing to brace for.

My explicit memories, in contrast, feel more like a story I read in a book or an event that happened to someone else.

I can recall events fairly clearly, analyze them, even narrate them back.

But they don’t land the same. I don’t FEEL them anymore ….like I used to.

They don’t live in my body the same way they used to.

I think that is one way healing shows up- it’s not about erasing what happened, but learning how to read it differently. Feel it differently.

“Real growth begins when you get real with yourself. It takes courage to face the parts of yourself that you want to run away from, but that’s how transformation begins. It’s uncomfortable for the ego to drop the facade and see the bitter truth. The more you choose to be real with yourself the more you align with your true authentic self. Authenticity is opposite of the facade; it requires you to walk on the path that feels true to you. It’s okay to feel misunderstood—it’s important to remember it’s your path, so don’t bother too much about making others see why you’re walking it. Growth requires being true to oneself.”

— Pawan Nair | The Higher Self

I forget to be where my feet are sometimes.

That’s still a work in progress..

I think that’s why this episode hit as close as it did. It’s not that I feel like a fraud.

It’s that I am always measuring between who I am and who I am still becoming.

And I feel like after a while, even peace begins to feel suspicious.

When the nervous system is trained to associate rest with risk.

Silence starts to sound like a setup.

I have learned though, that calm doesn’t always have to mean collapse.

It’s relearning what life feels like outside of fight-or-flight.

That was all new to me. Allowing peace, without questioning it- atleast right away.

It feels like this whole week has kind of been centered around that.