Feeling Frantic

​Sometimes FRANTIC turns up, crashes into my life, my day, my hour. In his razzle dazzle helmet and coat of steel. I’m real! he shouts. I’m powerful.
 
And I believe him.

I know when frantic has arrived because my head spins around like a chocolate wheel. The world swirls- I’m overcome by the ten thousand things I have to do by yesterday. There’s layers of commitment/ ideas/ necessities and I don’t know where to start.
 
Feeling Frantic.
Being frantic.
Frantic has slipped into my body. Owner occupier.
 
I turn this way and that. I struggle, cajole, negotiate, urge, supplicate.
 
Overcome by Frantic and his illusory presence (illusions are convincing: that’s what makes them illusions).
 
PHYSICAL SENSATION

What I have discovered is ….
Meeting Frantic at the level of PHYSICAL SENSATION is the cure
 
Let it swirl. Feel the physical feelings. Colours, shapes, hoopla, firecrackers, neons, flashing, points of light, barbed wire, frilly doilies, pulsing, pulsating, twisting and turning.
 
That’s what Frantic feels like for me, the sensations in my body and nervous system when frantic comes calling.
 
What are yours?
 
BODY SENSING
 
I’m discovering how body sensation is the immediate forerunner to thought. Okay, there’s only a nano second between them, but it’s a separation nonetheless. When we catch our ‘stuff’ at the basic level of body sensation, experience it, allow it, name it, the thoughts they give rise to can’t get a rise.
 
Instead frantic can be labelled “that big pushy spin around feeling”.
 
When I sit with the sensations, allow the sensations, meet big tough frantic openly with his message of Shout! Do! Faster! More!, his hold starts to melt ….

Then a funny things happens. A welcome thing.
I see a chink in his armour.
A tiny tiny glint.
 
It gives me hope….. a fragile, what-if hope.
 
I stop in my tracks and WHAM it hits me.
 
Frantic isn’t real!
 
Oh, what massive relief!!!!
 
SETTLING DOWN

The swirl of a thousand million atoms are slowing now. Feel them start to settle. Let it happen..
… and the world is coming back into focus.
 
It’s just my nervous system playing up. Acting out. Caused by Monday morning so-much-to-do timetable thoughts. It’s just coz i’m planning all the things I need to do this week... And want to get it down all at once. Impatient. Driven.
 
The sad truth sticks up its skinny hand. It wants to be heard: you can only squish so much into a small container. Get real. Simplify. Slow down. Let go.
 
Sit with frantic. Stop, watch and feel: Frantic will go all coy and deflate.
 

Copyright Shakti Burke 2017

read more: Somatic Experiencing

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