Internal Expresssion Restrictions

Sometimes I dont notice how restricting I am of self-love, and giving myself the space to be. Especially in the creative areas of my being. Over my time in the eating disorder clinic, I learned many of my restriction habits and signals and worked on the regulation of those habits with food, but not with creativity and other ways I restrict myself for an illusion of control. This came to a head as these past few days have been some of the hardest in the past month of the pandemic and pretty much complete isolation. I was in such a funk that even after my two planned workouts, a shower and a good meal, I was still just so stuck, mentally with both feeling so much and feeling nothing at all (that specific mental space I will elaborate on another time). I knew this had to do with feeling like I had no way to export and process the mess that was just a pressure cooker inside my mind but didn't really know how to relieve the pressure in a healthy way. Luckily in all my mindless scrolling of Instagram, I happened upon a good friend (basically a sister) post discussing the creative block along with a coloring book mid color. This reminded me I actually had a coloring book and inspired me to take it off the shelf. Of course, I struggled with the classic thought I have "Don't waste the coloring book you dont have so many, and this one is special you bought it your last week in Florida." My thoughts seem to not be my friend most of the time, but I managed to walk myself out of that ditch with "Yea, its special so use it in a special time, and also you can buy more coloring books, they aren't exclusive to America, and also there is Amazon you know." Finally, I opened the book up to where I had last stashed the pencils and realized it was a very unfinished picture from the one night I stayed up as late as they let me in the psychiatric ward coloring. This brought a different wave of emotions-the first one was shame. "Am I in such a bad place like when I was in the psychiatric ward that I need to color?" My immediate response to that thought was "seriously? just because you colored when you were in a bad state in the hospital, it doesn't mean you are in the same place. You can be in different places and still color to relax and calm your mind." So after running a mental marathon with myself over a coloring book and some colored pencils, I opened it up to a new design and started. I put on some background music- classical cello has been my go-to for a while (it makes me miss my days of cello, but also puts me in a calm space, another post another time). I colored for a while and could just feel my mind release-I mean I haven't been able to write anything for weeks and have been actually trying, it's not perfect and my mind sent other thoughts, but I was able to just fall into the soothing rhythmic colors and lines and tried to relax into the experience. Funnily enough, I chose a picture of a bird to color in and the picture I started to color in the hospital was of fish, so probably another post to analyze another time.  For now, I am just going to try and hold space for myself and not overrun my mind with thoughts and when I get overrun, then let them out.