Last week, I could feel myself getting touchy. Defensive. I noticed it in my husband’s responses to me and his facial reactions. Our conversations were bordering in that space between neutral and annoyed. Short answers. The desire to tell him to stop asking questions. Irritable answers (“I said I’ll do it!”) to simple requests.
He took himself off from my vicinity before I could bite his head off.
And in that pause, I noticed it. The anxiety. The fear. And how they were manifesting themselves in touchiness and defensiveness.
I asked myself, “Why am I feeling this way?”
Before I started meditating, I wouldn’t even pause. I would just power through, bulldozing everyone with short answers, annoyance, sensitivity to criticism. I would end the day, feeling drained, unhappy and alienated from everyone. No surprise given my reactions to them.
Because of meditating, I could do a quick check-in: “Why am I feeling this way?”
The answer was simple. Write Away, the retreat I had wanted to do for so long, is finally happening next week. I’m also in the process of making another dream project happen. It will take a lot of resources—physical, financial, emotional. The overwhelm was making me feel this way.
I took deep breaths. I focused on what was in front of me and broke down what I needed to do in small steps. To shift my energy from feeling heavy with overwhelm into lightness and joy,I also stepped away from my desk for half a day. I took out my journal and wrote.
Because of meditating, I could discover why I was feeling that way and could take responsibility for my choices and how I wanted to feel and act.
When my husband came back, instead of touchiness and defensiveness, he found calm and apologies, a light presence instead of a heavy one.
