Feeling Down – Going Up
- Sep 2, 2021
- 5 min read
Written by: Marnix Pauwels, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
This is going to be a weird post.
A very honest post.
And a pretty long one.
It’s about being in a place of throbbing insecurity, of true confusion, of no fucking clue what to do.
And it’s also about the realization that at the deepest level, that’s totally acceptable.
It’s about bad news and good news.
About REAL discomfort and lostness and negativity, and about glimpses of utter stability and excitement and light.
So...
Here’s what happened, and where I am right now.
Over the last few months, I’ve noticed myself becoming way more sensitive to many different things.
All of a sudden I couldn’t watch violent movies anymore, and I found myself being deeply physically affected by loud noise and frantic movement, even more than was already the case.
I became easily angry for no reason, and I felt more and more judgmental.
Almost all the time.
I felt (and feel) impatient and aggressive in a way that was more like the old me, and I couldn’t (and can’t) really focus very well.
It was like I was quickly losing my grip on the things I thought were under my control, and even the ease of living WITHOUT control -because there ultimately isn’t such a thing of course- evaporated.
I found myself feeling unhinged, distorted, shaken, in my day-to-day experience.
I have been feeling ‘out of place’ for weeks now, where it almost seems like I woke up in a world that looks exactly like the one I was used to living in, but also feels like it’s somehow completely different.
It’s like I have been secretly taken apart when I wasn’t looking, and was put back together in a different way.
As if I am being radically rewired, as if new software is installed that I don’t know how to use yet.
I don’t feel like me right now.
The me that is in the world.
The me, the vessel, that is the interface between the world I live in, and the consciousness that is the space and potential for that creation, and makes it possible to experience.
I feel really fucking weird, I feel off, uncomfortable, unstable and tired.
The bad news is that I have no clue what’s really going on and where it’s going.
We are innate and avid storytellers, and we desperately need our stories and their linearity to feel safe and in control.
So when we lose the thread, when the story becomes terrifyingly unclear and you feel somehow obsolete and confused, it sucks, and it can be terrifying.
All of that is happening.
Weird shit.
But the good news is the same as the bad news: I have no clue what’s going on, and no idea where it’s going, yet I somehow have a general feel for the direction.
Up.
For the first time in my life I really, REALLY know that I am taken care of, even though this realization is not completely soothing or healing or comforting constantly, and it’s not really something I can ‘use’ to feel better.
I am just all over the place, mostly.
Everything that freaks me out and kicks my ass is still there.
The anger, the discomfort, the sensitivity to sounds and harsh movements, the judgments, the impatience, the feeling of drifting in a dense fog.
The sensation of not being the me I used to know.
It’s all there, but... not as devastating as it once was, or supposed to be (not even close).
It’s there, I don’t like it, but it feels like I am carried through it somehow.
As I am writing this I suddenly realize that these are circumstances that probably would have made me really depressed in the past.
The symptoms are there, but they somehow can’t get to me.
I am fucked up, and I am totally fine.
How about that?
This was not supposed to be one of those ‘Everything can seem really messed up but it will turn out alright anyway!’-posts.
I didn’t really want to include this obvious emotional arch of going from misery to hope in a single blog.
Yet it somehow turns out like that anyway.
I guess we need to hear those real, uplifting stories over and over again, and I am sure we need to keep telling ourselves everything will be okay.
We need to know that even the people who seem to be in a perfect place all the time, The Superstars of Wellbeing, can lose it temporarily, feel utterly directionless, and somehow get on with it.
I am still in it, and I don’t want to pretend it makes me glow with gratitude and appreciation (although it actually does, during the day, more and more).
The most powerful and amazing thing is: I have no clue what’s really going on, but my intuition tells me without a doubt that this is about profound, exciting, liberating, awesome change.
I am shifting like crazy, up, UP.
The human me is kicking and screaming and crying and feeling hopeless and angry and lost, it’s constantly looking for solutions and answers and self-medication, but it is also really, really, really clear that’s not the whole story.
I am totally aware of this chaos, this discomfort, this weirdness.
And I also see the tidal quality of it, the swelling and the dying.
So it’s not me, the observant phenomenon, it can’t be.
Right now, while I am sitting in front of my computer, I am confused and somehow even nervous and insecure, but I am also not.
It’s destabilizing, it’s vague and kinda foggy, but that is just the tragedy in my awareness, not the stage or the theater.
All of the drama is ever so subtly encompassed by something that is more true, more real, more powerful, more timeless and endlessly bigger.
I feel weird and raw, it’s like I’m in a different dimension, and that notion makes all the difference in a really good way.
I can feel confused AND see the confusion.
I can feel pissed off and impatient AND connect to what’s completely neutral and loving.
And the most amazing thing is how hopeful this hopelessness feels.
Shifting sucks, and big shifts can be awful.
But it will be SO worth it.
Oh man, this life!
Marnix Pauwels, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Marnix Pauwels is a Dutch transformative coach and author of eight books -mostly- about mental health, living in Amsterdam with two cats. He has worked in advertising as a copywriter and Creative Director for 30 years, is a singer/songwriter and has extensive knowledge of addiction/compulsive behavior, depression, and anxiety, deepened by personal experience. Marnix has always been fascinated by what drives people, and more in particular, what drives them crazy. He’s read over 5.000 books on self-development/improvement, life-hacks, and spirituality viewed thousands of videos on the topics and kept on exploring the depths of the human mind and how to navigate our psychological storms with grace and respect. As a transformative coach, Marnix has helped thousands of people find a more playful, exciting, creative, and liberated life, living from a clear mind and a deep trust in their personal resilience. Marnix is a curious world traveler who loves to meet new people, write, wonder, and keep fit and happy.
