I just CAN'T.

Sometimes I just can't ... get up, be productive, smile, work out, ...

I judge myself for being too lazy. I am looking for a reason why I am so tired or exhausted when I can’t find a plausible cause. I am ashamed to say I don't have stress and I still don't get shit done.

I don't understand why but I do know it is happening. And it is coming more and more into my consciousness. I had this nagging in my gut and I was wondering "Could I be tired or exhausted from years ago?" - After some research and following my intuition my answer is YES! I am eventually feeling the heavy load I was carrying for decades.

I still try to force myself to do things but the inner NO is so enourmously strong and the exhaustion just kicks me into collapse, that I have to surrender. I am being lazy for weeks now and I feel bad to say that. At the same time I am deeply grateful to even get the opportunity to experience that.

Biologically, only when you finally start to relax and live a normal-paced life, the nervous system can start to feel safe enough to slowly release old embodied and deeply stored patterns of tension and stress from the past. Only when it is silent enough you can hear ... The slow waking up to a new way of life within myself - more balanced, living my own values, choosing my environment and people, trying to listen to my boundaries - might have laid a ground for trust. Trust into a new kind of "Maybe now it is different from before?", "Maybe now it could be safe enough to relax?" ... It seems as if it is showing me all the extreme alertness and excruciating restraints from childhood adversities, stress in school and former jobs, relationships, and probably even the DNA-engraved stress patterns of the generations before me (post- war and war), let alone the residual inhumane black pedagogical habits of all kinds of (medical/scholar) institutions of the East German ‘80s.

I want to take that chance though and not repeat those old ways. If that is the task on hand, I try to tackle it: Feel the deeply rooted and embodied patterns of tension, trauma, stress. And if I give it enough space instead of again forcing it into something it clearly doesn’t want, I might have a chance ... a chance to release, a chance to show it a new reality, a chance to set that bound energy free again. Instead of cramping and retracting it might relax and use that energy for creativity, productivity, healing and compassion instead of protection, fight or flight. To hold space for something frozen to become alive again takes up strength and energy. Even if I don't notice it, it is happening anyways. It comes with the release of never fully felt and intense emotions - as they were too overwhelming, too threatening or unbearable back then. They might have endangered the environment and attachments that I had (or the generations before me). To hear and let it (past-me) fully feel what it never could feel needs a strong container (present-me) to hold all that. I think I understand now why I am so tired.

The hardest part might be to remind myself to not fight it or be mad or sad about it but to turn towards it and address it in its calling. To find the courage over and over again to face what might come up if I do exactly that. And to protect it from the misunderstanding judgment of "the old ways of society".

Fingers crossed. Let’s start to create new ways!