The Invisible Hand of God Is Nervous
Tl;dr: I scared the universe into changing everything in my life in one month.
I’ve long believed there's some sort of energetic algorithm that rules the invisible hand of God in our lives and a good old public display of madness can force that hand to come down and move things around.
Suffering in silence and making the best of a bad situation isn’t going to change anything for you. But if you smear your naked body in blood and throw a javelin into the sky on a playground, the energetic algorithm is going to flag that as dangerous and respond in some way.
Basically, you need to scare the universe into thinking you could burn everything to the ground so that it will send resources your way.
That's how this month has felt. Like I threw a tantrum that scared the universe and it went, "Ok ok, we'll send you something. Just chill out!”
Within 24 hours of my last post (aka the public display of madness), Lifelong Mystery #1 unlocked itself. I discovered that the likely root cause of the health issues I’ve had throughout my life was nervous system dysregulation.
It’s embarrassing to admit that I don’t know why it took so long to realize this. Almost every holistic doctor or health practitioner I’ve ever been to has made some comment about me having a “sensitive nervous system,” “bad nerves,” or that I need “nervous system support.” And yet somehow, I never imagined there was anything deeper I could do to heal my nervous system.
Within minutes of opening myself to this idea, a cascade of realizations hit me about how this explained so many mysteries in my life.
✨ Why I could never go to sleepovers as a child without having a meltdown.
✨ Why I cried every single morning that I went to school for most of elementary school.
✨ Why I couldn’t handle even the smallest changes to my diet or routine as a child without becoming hysterical.
✨ Why I’ve always struggled with severe insomnia since as far back as I can remember.
✨ Why I’ve always been overly sensitive to noisy environments and people.
✨ Why I have so many food and chemical sensitivities despite being relatively healthy.
✨ Why all of my most mysterious health crises primarily affected bodily functions associated with my autonomic nervous system and why they all happen during the most intensely stressful times of my life.
Truly, it all seems so obvious now that I feel stupid to have wracked my brain on this for so long.
Of course, someone who was raised by a bipolar alcoholic and a puritanical zealot to think Armageddon was coming at any moment would never feel safe.
Of course, if neither of them had ever experienced stability or safety in their lives, how would I have ever been able to learn that in my key developmental years?
And of course, if half of my family are all mentally ill, criminal-minded addicts and the other half are all deeply repressed, apocalypse-obsessed autistics, then it makes sense that I’d have some faulty wiring baked into my nervous system.
So, almost immediately after figuring this out, I started a 21-day nervous system reset with one of the top minds in nervous system regulation, Irene Lyon. After doing that and experiencing noticeable changes early on (like sleeping for more than 3 hours a night! whooooaoaoa!), I moved into her 12-week nervous system rewire program.
So far, I feel like my mind is blown daily with all that I’m learning. Already, I feel like this is the greatest investment I’ve ever made towards a future where I can deal with stress without my body breaking down.
Early in the 21-day reset, Irene mentioned that the first step in healing is getting out of a stressful environment. For me, that was my apartment. My downstairs neighbor’s lifestyle revolved around playing racecar or war-related video games until 5 am every night.
Despite my formal complaints through the landlord and my almost nightly wall-banging, he decided he simply could not live without playing these games at maximum volume every night. Even with earplugs, a white noise machine, and fans, it still felt like I was in a war zone.
Serendipitously, the same day that I heard Irene mention the importance of getting out of a stressful environment, I saw that a bigger apartment in my building had JUST become available. It felt like a sign. Like the universe was saying, “THIS. This is what’s going to keep her from saying earnestly insane things on the internet for a while.” Then I moved in one week later and my home life has been extremely chill and quiet ever since.
Once everything settled down and I could spend my nights focusing solely on nervous system learning, the answer to Lifelong Mystery #2 dropped. (Not really a lifetime but it feels that way so the name stays.) I found out that an OTC medicine I’ve taken for almost 3 years is 100% the cause of the extremely debilitating and weird wheezing, and airway tightening issues I’ve had that no doctors have been able to figure out. Twist!
This is a much bigger story that I’ll leave for another time. But I’m slowly going off it and feel like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, in the not-death way 🎉, for the first time in such a long time. I have to go off it incredibly slowly because of the side effects, but working towards any sort of progress feels infinitely better than being adrift in a sea of mysteries like I have been for years.
Anyway, that’s the news for now. More to come.