There are many moments where I feel like I don’t have “headspace”. Sometimes I don’t even know what it means, but I just feel like I don’t have the headspace. It is a feeling of not having time or space in my head to do anything: respond to messages, to exercise, to cook breakfast/lunch/dinner for myself, to meet up with friends and family, to properly do the work that I am paid to do. My head just feels full. And it is such an annoying feeling. And I hate it the most when it concerns a friend or family member and they ask me for something small: to hang out, to have a call or a simple “how are you?” text. I get overtaken by a feeling of overwhelm and I just want to crawl under my blanket and pretend no one needs me, I don’t have any responsibilities, I don’t need food or water and I can just lay there for days. But this is not the case. I am an adult. I do have responsibilities. I do need food and water and I cannot just lay in my bed for days.

Ok I’ll stop rambling now and I will add some structure to this post.

 

When did this start?

I wouldn’t say there is an actual time that this started. But I can  recall when I started to really feel the negative benefits of this ‘lack of headspace’ and that was during my years at uni. I remember in my first few years that my thoughts started to take over my mind and influence my actions. I would feel sad and lonely more often than not. I did have friends and a partner, but I could still feel so sad and so alone. I would have racing thoughts that made life feel like it was too much, it would keep me up at night and I could not focus on my classes or on studying. I didn’t feel the headspace to consistently exercise, I was terrible towards my boyfriend and constantly felt lost and overwhelmed. I was however able to push through and graduate, but this went on all throughout university for 6 years.

Moving on to after graduation, I still felt feelings of overwhelm and sadness. I couldn’t figure out what to do for a job. I liked everything and nothing at the same time. And when I finally started my first job (9 months after graduating), I disliked it so much and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I worked that job for a year during covid times and I had maybe 2 hours of actual work each day (that was far below my intellectual level), but I just couldn’t get myself to do it. So I would often sit behind my laptop all day and wouldn’t do the work until AFTER work hoursc, because I didn’t have the headspace before that time. Can you imagine!?

Moving on to the now. I quit that job I just talked about and I have been working at my current job for almost 2,5 years now. And working on a daily basis is still SO hard. Why? Because. I. don’t. Have. The. Headspace. I constantly feel overwhelmed and anxious and I am just waiting for someone to finally see it and for my employer to fire me. Wow, I know, that sounds dramatic and I wish I did not feel this way, but I do.

 

Available tools

So, have I tried getting past all of this? Of course. I have. But it is like as if nothing really seems to work. I tried affirmations and meditation. Which works for a while, but if I let go of doing it on a daily basis, all the overwhelm and racing thoughts just come right back. 

So, I was reminded of a tool I learned from Paulien Timmer, but haven’t done consistently. Because as I soon as I started to feel benefits, I would let go using the tolls again. Paulien is an expert on overcoming anxiousness and her methods are focused on feeling through your thoughts and emotions. Which is opposite from meditating or affirmations, which I guess is more pivoting: you focus on quieting the thoughts or changing the thoughts to more positive ones.

But what Paulien teaches is that that doesn’t make the current thoughts and emotions go away, you just suppress them. So, I am going to focus on her tools and I am going to do them consistently.

 

21 days of releasing thoughts

So Paulien uses multiple tools, but the ones I really like are brain dumping and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). What she teaches is that thoughts are just that: thoughts. You don’t have to take them seriously and you don’t have to act on them. You can just feel them through and release them. 

Brain dumping is grabbing a big notebook and writing down all of your thoughts until you feel empty. This can take 10 minutes, but it can also take an hour or two hours. It is important to not focus on writing things that make sense, it is literally a brain dump. The thoughts can be ridiculous, scary, mean, all of that. But the idea is that if you write them down, they don’t become more real, they actually flow through you and you’ll see that they can’t do anything: they don’t hurt you or anyone else and they don’t have to make you act on them.

EFT is tapping on different spots on your body, which releases emotions. There are two ways to do this: either you tap on the thoughts you already have (to release them) or you tap on better feeling thoughts.

Both tools are focused on making you feel lighter and more calm. They literally create headspace, which is what I need. 

So I’ll be back in 21 days, which is the 1st of June, with a result on how this went!

Love,

Marie