My heart in my throat

Recently I was talking to a friend about an experience that I had many years ago that challenged me in ways I could not have anticipated, took me right out of my comfort zone; but was subsequently transformative. I described it as my heart being in my throat.

This was especially meaningful today as I have had some challenging experiences over the last few weeks, and when I try to talk about them, I am overcome by those same feelings, so that I am literally choked up with the emotions and find it almost impossible to express myself.

These feelings often have the sensation of going round and around my head and heart, with no way out, so that even with everything I know about how to reduce the emotional hijacking, and the knowledge that I have a choice about how I react to them, it often takes some time to bring that emotional arousal down and for my body to catch up with my new thoughts and make the chemical changes that mean I can feel calmer physically.

I now realise that this experience is so often all about things that are totally outside of my control, that once I have stepped back from them, the feelings start to subside. I can breathe once more and start to look at the situation from a different perspective.

It is more useful to remember that they rarely last long and that like a wave or the ebb and flow of water on the beach, they come and they go. I can breathe easily once more and calm returns