I’m learning to apply the not-immediately-obvious skill of unwinding.
I’ve gotten really good at winding myself up for one reason or another, sometimes for very good reasons, but winding up needs to be unlearnt.
It’s better than calling it mindfulness or meditation, I think. Unlearning winding up gets to the heart of the problem… that I wind myself up in the first place!
It also helps to call my brain, body and feelings out as the 3rd person. It objectifies the things, and gives me a way of dealing with distracting signals inside me. So much unnecessary drama is better dealt with that way.
I also get to distract the things by taking deep breaths—it pushes them back and helps them settle down.
It’s effort, this unwinding thing… a lot more than living in autopilot. But it’s worth this than dealing with being wound up all the time.
