If you experienced past trauma at certain times of the day, you may find that there’s still an urgency to prioritize safety at these specific times of day.
For example, maybe at night, you don’t really care about your ‘thriving’ goals, because you’re too focused caring about your ‘surviving’ goals.
Maybe this looks like pushing everyone away to protect your autonomy, or feeling more reactive by other people’s demands or their neglect. Or just doing your best to cope with the acute panic that still consistently shows up.
And maybe when you wake up in the morning, you feel confused, because your mind is suddenly in a different mode now—able to access more nuance, flexibility and the stuff that inspires you. And maybe this is bc your brain is out of the danger zone so it’s able to focus on thriving now.
If this is you, please don’t shame yourself for being on this roller coaster ride. Allow yourself a minute to reflect on your nighttime experience and then give yourself permission to get back to investing in your daytime goals.
I find when I replace my shame with wisdom, it makes sense that I have parts of my self that work the day shift and other parts that work the night shift. That’s what was necessary to cope with those old circumstances out of my control.
But I believe we can begin to merge these parts. I believe as we strengthen our attention, this part of ourselves that is aware can be available around the clock to support both our thriving parts and our surviving parts.
With awareness of all our parts, we will get to experience that there is nothing ‘wrong’ with us. That we are both an extension of our environment and an extension of the divine. That we are whole, complete, fascinating, and worthy of being here.
-JLK
